The Forgotten Virtues of Community

Having traveled to downtown Chicago recently, I recall a reading recommendation of a friend mentioned some time back in a blog post comment. He recommended Alan Ehrenhalt's The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago of the 1950s.

I have the book and it is a provocative look at three Chicago neighborhoods at a time generally considered the "golden age of community": the 1950s. With keen analysis, Ehrenhalt reveals the glue that held each community together: the limitations of life and accepted authority figures. Beneath the author's analysis, it is not difficult to see that the breakdown of authority in society is a source of cultural decline, and even personal happiness.

This book does not romanticize or whitewash city life in the 1950s, but it does challenge some of the commonly held assumptions about the unmitigated value of progress. And it brings to light a theme increasingly suspected in society today: the rise of unlimited personal freedom and breathtaking cultural progress is not a friend of community.