Palaces for the People

Americans are in a crisis of loneliness. Factors like the pandemic and our deep political divides have kept us isolated, while social media and media echo chambers sort many of us into silos. There isn’t a single reason why this loneliness crisis exists, but there is a way to recover: Social infrastructure.  

Eric Klinenberg declares that social infrastructure – such as public libraries, churches, public schools and other “palaces for the people” – can help fight issues such as inequality, polarization, and even climate change. This idea of supporting and enhancing social infrastructure is discussed in his 2018 book, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (the title being “borrowed” from Andrew Carnegie who stated public libraries are “palaces for the people”). The conversation around community spaces such as churches, senior centers, public schools and libraries representing the bulk of social infrastructure continues as we enter the “Great Reknitting.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but in order to restore civil society, we need to start with libraries. 

This book list is meant to support CivicCLP’s Speaker Series, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life with Eric Klinenberg. Click here to register for this event. 

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Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

We are living in a time of deep divisions. Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn’t seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together and find a common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done? You can also check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby or as eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.


Heat Wave

As Klinenberg demonstrates in this incisive and gripping account of the contemporary urban condition, the widening cracks in the social foundations of American cities that the 1995 Chicago heat wave made visible have by no means subsided as the temperatures returned to normal. The forces that affected Chicago so disastrously remain in play in America’s cities, and we ignore them at our peril.


Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone

With eye-opening statistics, original data, and vivid portraits of people who go solo, Klinenberg upends conventional wisdom to deliver the definitive take on how the rise of living alone is transforming the American experience. Going Solo is a powerful and necessary assessment of an unprecedented social change. You can also check out this title as eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.



Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness

In Seek You, Kristen Radtke’s wide-ranging exploration of our inner lives and public selves, Radtke digs into the ways in which we attempt to feel closer to one another, and the distance that remains.


Inclusive Design: A Universal Need

Stretching beyond the successes and challenges of universal design since the inception of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 and its amendment in 2008, Inclusive Design: A Universal Need details how an inclusive approach to design creates an accessible and aesthetically pleasing environment for a total population-not just the aging or differently abled.


Modern Romance

At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated? You can also check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby or as eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.



The Sociable City: An American Intellectual Tradition

When celebrated landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted despaired in 1870 that the “restraining and confining conditions” of the city compelled its inhabitants to “look closely upon others without sympathy,” he was expressing what many in the United States had already been saying about the nascent urbanization that would continue to transform the nation’s landscape: that the modern city dramatically changes the way individuals interact with and feel toward one another.