Chapter 1
America's Broken Bonds: How We Lost Each Other and How to Reconnect
In an era of unprecedented material wealth and technological advancement, Americans are dying-not just physically, but spiritually. Senator Ben Sasse's "Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal" arrived at a critical moment in our national conversation, quickly becoming a cultural touchstone for those seeking to understand America's deepening divisions. Oprah Winfrey called it "the book we need right now," while former Defense Secretary James Mattis praised it as "essential reading for anyone concerned about the future of America." The book's timing proved prescient-published just before the pandemic that would further isolate Americans from each other, it diagnosed our loneliness epidemic and offered a roadmap back to community.
What makes Sasse's analysis particularly compelling is his unique perspective as both a Harvard-educated historian and a fifth-generation Nebraskan who maintains his primary residence in the heartland. Unlike many political figures who merely visit their home states, Sasse lives the tension between America's coastal power centers and its heartland communities. His diagnosis is sobering yet hopeful: our political tribalism isn't the disease but a symptom of our collapsing social bonds. The true path to healing lies not in Washington but in our neighborhoods, where we must rediscover the art of being neighbors in an increasingly rootless age.
Chapter 2
The Loneliness Epidemic: America's Silent Killer
The summer of 1995 brought Chicago the deadliest heat wave in American history. For seven sweltering days, temperatures soared past 100 degrees with suffocating humidity. As air conditioners failed and power grids collapsed, bodies succumbed to heat exhaustion. When the crisis ended, coroners counted 739 heat-related deaths-more than twice the death toll of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Yet unlike the famous fire, this catastrophe remains largely forgotten in our national memory. Why? Because the victims died as they had lived: unnoticed. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg discovered something remarkable in his five-year investigation of the tragedy. The neighborhoods with the lowest death rates weren't necessarily the wealthiest or best-equipped-they were the most connected. In resilient communities, residents checked on vulnerable neighbors. The isolated died alone because they lived alone.
This pattern reflects a broader crisis in American life: loneliness is literally killing us. While poets and novelists have long depicted death from heartbreak, modern medicine confirms what literature intuited. "Broken heart syndrome" (takotsubo cardiomyopathy) produces stress hormones that mimic heart attack effects. But chronic loneliness exacts an even greater toll-one lonely day damages your body roughly equivalent to smoking an entire pack of cigarettes.
The statistics are alarming: lonely people are 25% more likely to die prematurely from various health problems. Loneliness reduces longevity more than heavy drinking or obesity. Men face particular risk-bachelors under 45 die at higher rates than married peers, and elderly men constitute America's loneliest demographic. During Chicago's heat wave, four times more men than women died alone.
How widespread is our loneliness problem? A fifth of Americans cite loneliness as "a major source of unhappiness," while a third of those over 45 struggle with "chronic loneliness." These numbers likely understate the crisis, partly because our terminology is imprecise. Many patients who describe depression symptoms are actually describing isolation. As psychiatrists Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz observed, "Most of our patients were more comfortable saying they were depressed than saying they were lonely."
Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam has been chronicling America's community collapse for decades. Between 1975-1995, membership in social clubs, PTAs, and religious organizations plummeted. Home entertaining fell by nearly half. Even family dinners declined as households retreated into separate spaces. Our "social capital"-the networks of relationships that help individuals and societies flourish-has steadily eroded. In 1964, 77% of Americans believed "most people can be trusted" compared to roughly 30% today.
Chapter 3
The Two Americas: Diverging Paths in a Fractured Nation
America isn't experiencing uniform social decline-we're splitting into two distinct societies. Putnam's research reveals the top third of Americans are doing well while the bottom two-thirds are in free-fall, creating what commentators call "scissors graphs." These diverging trends appear across virtually every social metric: out-of-wedlock births, fatherlessness, obesity rates, financial security, neighborhood trust, civic engagement, and social mobility. The separation is so profound that these groups increasingly live in different geographic areas, shop at different stores, and consume different media.
The gap in family formation is particularly stark and illustrative of this divide. Among women with high school diplomas or less, out-of-wedlock births rose from 20% in the 1970s to nearly 70% today, while the rate for college-educated women remains under 10%. This represents two almost entirely different cultures emerging within America. In wealthy suburbs, traditional nuclear families remain the norm, while in working-class neighborhoods, single parenthood has become standard. These patterns create self-reinforcing cycles that affect everything from childhood development to economic opportunity.
The divide increasingly falls along educational lines, with profound implications for social mobility. Only about one-third of Americans have college degrees, and they've received approximately 80% of the economic gains in recent decades. College-educated parents typically engage in what sociologists call "concerted cultivation" - reading more to their children, driving them to enrichment activities, advocating for them in school, and actively encouraging higher education. These advantages compound through network effects, as their children benefit from connections to other successful families, internship opportunities, and mentorship networks.
While college isn't necessary for a meaningful life, there's a clear correlation between diplomas and success across multiple dimensions. College-educated and non-college-educated people now rarely intermarry or mix socially, with studies showing that only about 17% of marriages cross educational lines, down from 25% in the 1970s. The top third enjoys thick networks of support-family, friends, mentors, and professionals-while the bottom two-thirds face increasingly precarious lives with thin social connections and limited access to institutional resources.
The primary form of social capital is family, and its erosion among working-class Americans has had devastating consequences. As Putnam notes, the "massive, class-based decline" in two-parent families has produced enormous educational and economic consequences. Children's educational success now correlates tightly with family stability, while struggles track with having fathers who have minimal education or are absent. Research shows that children from stable two-parent households are 40% more likely to finish college and earn significantly more as adults.
The "Success Sequence"-finish high school, get a job, marry before having children-provides a simple formula for avoiding poverty that works across racial and ethnic lines. Those who follow this sequence have only a 3% chance of ending up poor; those who don't face 50/50 odds of poverty. This isn't about politics or morality-it's statistical reality backed by decades of research from institutions across the political spectrum. The sequence works because each step builds upon the previous one, creating a foundation for stable adult life.
America has effectively split into two different societies, with movement between them becoming increasingly difficult. One striking difference is the timing of first childbirth, which has profound implications for education and career development. Fifty years ago, college-educated women had their first child around age 21, just two years later than less-educated women. Today, college-educated women wait until 27, while non-college-educated women have children around 18-nearly a decade gap. This difference in timing affects everything from career trajectory to marriage prospects to long-term financial stability, further cementing the divide between America's two societies.
Chapter 4
Work Disrupted: Identity in an Age of Uncertainty
Throughout most of human history, people lived and worked within stable communities. Work, faith, family, and recreation were interconnected, giving people a natural "tribe" and shared identity. The Industrial Revolution fundamentally disrupted this pattern, creating periods of social turmoil as young people migrated from farms to factories seeking better opportunities.
Today's economic transformation parallels that earlier disruption. The average worker now stays at a company just four years, down from twenty-five years in the 1970s. With the rise of project-based freelancing, work relationships are becoming even more transient, creating uncertainty and anxiety about the future.
Driving is currently America's most common occupation, serving as the number one job in thirty-seven states. But autonomous vehicles could eliminate two-thirds of these jobs within the next decade. While self-driving technology promises benefits like increased safety and mobility for those who can't drive, it threatens millions of workers' livelihoods and identities.
McKinsey's research reveals that 50 percent of current paid activities could be automated using already demonstrated technology. They predict up to one-third of workers in the US and Germany-800 million globally-will see their jobs disrupted within twelve years. Most jobs have roughly 30 percent of their activities that could be automated. Jobs will be "unbundled" and "rebundled," with tasks being redistributed. Some experts predict that within four years, half of American workers will be freelancers cobbling together multiple projects.
Beyond income inequality or class mobility, our economic disruption raises profound questions about identity, meaning, and purpose. Work isn't merely about providing for one's family-it's about having purpose and serving neighbors. We need to be needed. As Bill Clinton put it: "Work is about more than making a living... It's fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people."
Our work identities have fundamentally changed. While the author's father's identity as "Coach Sasse" was permanent and rooted in community, today's workers stay at jobs for just over four years compared to the two-and-a-half decades typical in the 1970s. This transience means fewer deep workplace relationships form. Work has shifted from being a noun (an identity) to a verb (something we do temporarily). As jobs become shorter and less connected to tangible communities, we experience increasing detachment and rootlessness.
Chapter 5
The Comforts of Polititainment: How Media Exploits Our Loneliness
As we lose authentic community connections, we substitute television personalities as surrogate family members. TV networks deliberately design sets to resemble living rooms with fireplaces, creating the illusion of intimacy. Hosts invite viewer tweets and comments, making audience members feel part of a larger family. Television excels not at delivering substantive information but at selling a kind of cut-rate comfort to fill our loneliness.
Like the traffic light debate between Sasse's father and grandfather-each man noticing only evidence confirming his existing belief-we all filter information through our biases. Research confirms this-smokers eagerly consume information downplaying links between smoking and cancer, while political partisans spend far more time reading articles confirming their existing views.
Our minds desperately seek order, making us prone to "motivated reasoning"-accepting what we want to be true far more easily than uncomfortable facts. Studies show even Ivy League students see controversial calls in football games as right when they favor their school. This isn't an argument against objective reality, but should push us toward more humility about our certainties.
Journalists aren't exempt from human biases. Though most aim for objectivity, they inevitably view the world through lenses formed by education and experience. The media bubble is real-92% of journalists have bachelor's degrees compared to less than a third of Americans, only 7% are Republicans, and most national political reporters live in wealthy, liberal East Coast cities.
In America's media landscape, "nutpicking" has become a popular rhetorical strategy-finding the most extreme voices from the opposing side and presenting them as representative. Both left and right engage in this practice. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, Sean Hannity masterfully demonstrated this technique, using a CBS attorney's insensitive comment and a likely fake Twitter account to paint all liberals as heartless.
Our psychological craving for enemies serves a purpose-it helps us make sense of a chaotic world. Studies show that identifying a clear enemy actually makes people perceive the world as less disordered and dangerous. This explains our collective struggle with the Las Vegas shooting, where the perpetrator didn't fit familiar profiles. We desperately seek coherence in tragedy, which makes us vulnerable to media figures who redirect our blame toward convenient political targets.
Chapter 6
The Polarization Business Model: Profiting from Division
Sean Hannity has mastered both cable news and talk radio, earning approximately $40 million annually. His core objective isn't promoting conservatism or offering coherent arguments against liberalism-it's to rage. "I'm mad," he explained to the New York Times. Most cable news and talk radio shows operate this way, orchestrating content that helps people keep their fears and hatreds aligned. Hannity's simple storyline-liberals are evil, you're a victim, you should be furious-tells isolated people exactly what they want to hear.
Media organizations have mastered the business model of outrage. They track which stories engage readers, how long we stay on pages, and what makes us click. They tailor content to match our preferences, not to inform us about what's truly newsworthy. News sites collect extensive data about readers-location, age, reading habits-to optimize engagement. The goal is keeping us clicking, not informing us.
Even prestigious news organizations have surrendered to the demands of digital engagement. The Washington Post's "Bandito" tool tests different headlines in real-time, keeping whichever version attracts more clicks. This technology naturally favors sensationalism over accuracy. Headlines increasingly tell readers not just what happened but how to feel about it-the "Buzzfeed headline" approach that's now industry standard.
In April 2018, the New Yorker published an article attacking Chick-Fil-A's Manhattan expansion as a "creepy infiltration" due to the chain's "pervasive Christian traditionalism." This bizarre hit piece wasn't genuine fear of a "Great Chicken Crusade"-it was clickbait designed to anger conservatives and delight progressives. A cable news producer later confirmed their segment selection rule: "We only do two kinds of stories-those that make people who love us love us more, and those that make people who hate us hate us more."
In 1951, I Love Lucy debuted to an audience of two-thirds of all Americans. Despite serious social problems like segregation, the nation shared a common culture and optimism. Nearly everyone knew Lucy and Desi, creating a shared national experience. The contrast with today is stark-Sunday Night Football's peak 14% viewership in 2014 pales against Lucy's regular 70% audience. Today, Game of Thrones draws just 4% of Americans, while top cable news shows like Hannity and Maddow capture barely 1%.
American media evolved through three phases: local media with geographically constrained reporting; national media dominated by three networks, coinciding with our highest sense of national unity; and today's fragmented landscape where anyone can publish. While this brings extraordinary freedom, it also enables every form of nuttiness to find validation. Political media outlets exploit this by targeting isolated fanatics who, disconnected from real-world interactions, become easier marks as their grip on reality weakens.
Chapter 7
Set Tech Limits: Reclaiming Our Humanity
Silicon Valley's elite, including Apple founder Steve Jobs, ironically restrict their own children's technology use, recognizing the power of the devices they create. This paradox highlights our need to reconsider how technology affects our humanity-we should aim to be "free to" grow roots with real people and places rather than "free from" them.
Technology attracts us because it's novel, impressive, and useful. Scientists in Japan are developing headsets that can read and translate thoughts with 90% accuracy for numbers and 61% for syllables-technology that could help people with severe disabilities communicate. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's Neuralink aims to connect human brains directly to computers.
The pace of technological advancement is accelerating dramatically, as demonstrated by AlphaGo, Google DeepMind's artificial intelligence that defeated the world's top Go player. Unlike IBM's chess-playing Deep Blue, which calculated millions of possible moves, AlphaGo learns from experience, playing millions of games daily to improve its pattern recognition.
Beyond medical applications, robots are increasingly filling social roles. MIT professor Sherry Turkle observed nursing home residents interacting with My Real Baby, a robot doll simulating infant behaviors. Despite initially rejecting the doll as "mechanical," residents soon treated it like a real baby, sometimes even ignoring actual family visitors to care for it. These interactions reveal our vulnerability to forming emotional connections with machines.
Our technology addiction isn't a future problem-it's happening now. Americans have become screen addicts, with 26% admitting to being "almost constantly" online (rising to 40% among 18-29 year olds). The average person checks their smartphone every 4.3 minutes. We pretend our devices serve us, but in reality, they dictate the relationship.
We're losing something important as we become more attached to our screens-becoming more anxious, distracted, depressed, and exhausted. We're losing our ability to read closely, think carefully, and focus deeply. We seek validation from digital "friends" rather than spending time with real ones, becoming lonelier despite constant connection.
Sex is great, but technology is making it lousy by making it "free"-devoid of flirtation, foreplay, relationship, or commitment. Since the iPhone's introduction in 2007, real sexual activity has declined while pornography consumption has skyrocketed. Nearly half of 18-39 year-olds admit to viewing porn "yesterday," while "deepfake" technology now allows users to superimpose familiar faces onto performers' bodies.
Good sleep ranks among life's greatest pleasures, but our digital tools are disrupting our body's natural rhythms. Most of us sleep with phones within reach, using them to fall asleep and as alarm clocks. But we're sabotaging ourselves-smartphones emit blue light that signals our brains to wake up, not wind down. Harvard researchers found blue light exposure shifts sleep schedules by three hours, compared to just 90 minutes for non-blue light.
Chapter 8
Buy a Cemetery Plot: Putting Down Roots in a Rootless Age
Death is a wicked thief. At his friend's mother Jo's funeral, Sasse felt some relief. After a stroke twelve years earlier, she'd developed "locked in" syndrome-mentally present but unable to speak or write. The congregation sang a meaty hymn acknowledging suffering: "For all the saints, who from their labors rest. We feebly struggle; they in glory shine."
Place matters, but modern Americans increasingly struggle with rootlessness. Richard Florida classifies us into three groups: the mobile who glide from place to place riding the digital revolution's wave; the stuck who lack resources to build better lives; and the shrinking rooted who enjoy community in a particular place. We face an unsatisfying choice between economic opportunity with constant movement or stability with limited prospects.
At Lincoln's People's City Mission, Sasse discovered the homeless community's appreciation for their new cemetery. Their greatest fear wasn't just homelessness in life, but being forgotten in death-having no one notice when they died or care what happened to their bodies. The Mission created a memorial garden where names are etched in brick, promising: "You are not forgotten." This contrasts sharply with mobile Americans' discomfort with permanence.
Our consumer culture's endless choices diminish happiness rather than promote it. What we truly want are real connections-not internet fabrications but flesh-and-blood friends who stand by us through life's inevitable suffering. The profound joy comes from having someone who cleans up a sick child's mess with you at 3 a.m. Marriage offers genuine, deep friendship that requires work but proves far better than any two-dimensional counterfeit.
Many people never invest in their communities because they're always anticipating what's next. As teacher Josh Gibbs explains, we constantly believe happiness awaits in the next life stage: "Junior high students cannot wait to drive, drivers can't wait to date, daters can't wait to graduate..." This endless cycle prevents contentment, which "is a condition of the soul...not coming with getting what you want, but in giving thanks for what you have been given."
Our earthly homes will never fully satisfy, but meaningful relationships with those we share work, experiences, and love come closest. Sometimes change is necessary, but our changes should orient toward finding a place to stay and serve. There's wisdom in the quote attributed to Luther: "If I believed the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today." We can love our neighbors today without knowing what the future holds. Community is hard everywhere-people everywhere are annoying. Commit anyway and act as if your body will end up where you are. Eventually, you'll be right.
Chapter 9
We Need More Tribes: Rebuilding America From the Ground Up
America is experiencing unprecedented upheaval with collapsing communities and growing anxiety, distracting ourselves with artificial political hatreds. We must restore community for our new moment, recognizing old modes are obsolete. This requires habits that introduce neighborliness into a rootless age and building new institutions that bond mobile people together.
Like childhood rivalries between neighboring towns, our modern tribalism often focuses on superficial differences while ignoring important similarities. Good rivalries require similarity-Alabama/Auburn, Ohio State/Michigan-but problems arise when unimportant differences swallow up more significant commonalities. We need to believe that both our opponents' dignity and the character we model for our children require basic rules for debate.
During a July 2016 trip to Waziristan with Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly, political differences disappeared. Though they disagree on most domestic policy issues, in that dangerous environment they were clearly on the same side. They both supported U.S. Special Forces against jihadis, wanted proper equipment for American soldiers, shared frustrations about Pakistani reliability, and worried about tribal divisions in Afghanistan. When a Pakistani soldier offered them tea, they faced the same concerns about local water safety-their political party simply didn't matter.
Our identity cannot be found in anti-tribes or politics, but at home in our local communities. We must redirect our energy from angry national political discourse to serving our immediate surroundings-volunteering at schools, helping at soup kitchens, visiting nursing homes. Washington DC isn't meant to be the center of American life; it exists to maintain a framework for ordered liberty so our towns and cities can flourish.
The solution starts with turning off screens, logging out of social media, and engaging face-to-face: throwing balls with children, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping at church, or secretly mowing a neighbor's lawn. When we prioritize our identities incorrectly-putting political affiliations above being parents, spouses, neighbors-connections fray.
Politics has always evoked emotion, but in the past, people could discuss politics and remain friends. We've let loneliness and anxiety overcome our better nature. We're relational beings meant for community and rootedness, but our associations are withering. We're experiencing an economic and social revolution that can't be solved by government-what we lack isn't legislation but the bonds that give life meaning. At the end of the day, it's love that transforms "them" into "we."
