| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life. By Theda Skocpol. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. xviii, 366 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-8061-3532-8.)
In her important study of the changing role of voluntary associations in democracy from the late eighteenth century to the present, the Harvard political sociologist Theda Skocpol eschews nostalgia, naïve optimism, and lamentations about the decline of civic community to offer an enormously informative and readable contribution to the growing literature on civil society.	1
Beginning at the grave of a Maine farmer and Civil War veteran, Skocpol vividly evokes a vanished time when associational memberships were central to the lives of most Americans. From here she moves on to an overview and critique of the major studies of voluntary associations.	. . .

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