Amazon.com description: Product Description: Whether it's the PTA or bowling league, the Elks Club or the Girl Scouts, much has been written about the decline of the country's "social capital". In Silent Revolution, Everett Carll Ladd goes behind the gloomy headlines to determine the true state of the nation's social fabric -- and discovers that civic responsibility is alive and well and thriving in neighborhoods throughout the country.From parental involvement in schools and church attendance to charitable giving and volunteer work, Ladd charts this new activism across a range of benchmark areas, providing firm evidence of the sharing and participation that are reinventing and reenergizing community life.Offering surprising insights into how we live with each other as Americans, he shows how the technological revolution of our post-industrial era is inviting millions to explore civic life in ways never before possible -- and sheds new light on how this traditional "nation of joiners" continues to hold together.