Ashley Yeonju Kim Yeonju Kim itibaren Akdarya District, Uzbekistan itibaren Akdarya District, Uzbekistan

Putnam must've had a flotilla of graduate students under his command to compile all of the statistics between these covers. Rather than stick to anecdotes about those elusive Good Old Days, I admire that he attempted and succeeded in providing measurable, reproducible results drawn from dozens of sectors of American society to lend credence to his hypothesis: Our communities are unravelling. He's the first to admit that corelations shouldn't be mistaken for causation, but the mountain of data he offers up fit the data model he expected.... Caveat: Unless you enjoy wading through chapter after chapter of footnotes and external references, don't expect this to be a page-turner. It's more informative than enjoyable. I'd be interested to see how/if the data has changed since this was published 7 years ago.

Fascinating memoir (early 70's childhood) by a woman who had 3 siblings and very odd parents - yet the parents taught the kids a ton. They lived in AZ, Calif, West Virginia sometimes in tents or in the cars or unheated homes. Amazing to see how smart (lot of book reading, and lot of life lessons) the children were. They end up in NY - much later when the author is famous, her folks are happy living as dumpster divers in NY!

Review soon to be posted at env-econ.net