The Lonely Crowd
A Study of the Changing American Character
by David Riesman · first published 1950
3mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2016–2021first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
The Lonely Crowd is a 1950 sociological analysis by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney. Together with White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951), it is considered a landmark study of American character.
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
There's also Michel de Montaigne's essays from the 1500's On Solitude.[1] More recently, there are books like The Lonely Crowd from the 1960's, [2] and Anthony Storr's Solitude, from the 1980's[3] Of course, for thousands of years, spending time in solitude has been greatly valued for religious reasons, for "building character",…
on “Loneliness Is a Warning Sign to Be Social” ↗…bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe. Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam’s Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do." Even…
on “A friend of mine died and I didn't know because of algorithms” ↗Well as much as I can understand the author of this article wanting to get past Riesman’s ideas in “The Lonely Crowd” the time period his predictions occur is during the age of “incipient decline” which is definitely right now and hasn’t ended yet. I do think Riesman predicted the rise of social media in the context…
on “Afternotes III: The Lonely Crowd Within” ↗