Robert D. Putnam is the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the British Academy, and past president of the American Political Science Association. He has written a dozen books, translated into seventeen languages, including the best-selling Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, and more recently Better Together: Restoring the American Community, a study of promising new forms of social connectedness.