A Book by Akim D. Reinhardt
Seinfeld episode #28 “The Alternate Side”
Elaine: “I’ll be ostracized from the community.”
Jerry: “What community? There’s a community?”
Elaine: “Of course there’s a community.”
Jerry: “All these years I’m living in a community, I had no idea.”
Do you live in a community? If you’re in the United States, then Akim Reinhardt’s answer is, “Probably not.” In Disintegration: The Decline of Communities in America, Reinhardt makes the claim that there are no real, historic communities left in the U.S. Furthermore, he traces their decline over the last two centuries, showing how America slowly transformed from a country that was dominated by small, rural communities at its founding, to a modern nation of enormous cities, sprawling suburbs, and fractured rural areas.
The result has been a flourishing of individual liberties and freedoms, but also intense 
political partisanship. Since there are no more communities to set and enforce values and rules of behavior at the local level, Americans often find themselves battling fiercely over would-be community issues. Abortion, gun control, sex education, gay marriage, and countless other hot button topics can’t be decided at the community level because there are no communities left to decide them. And when enough interested citizens believe these issues are too important to be left up to individual choice, they dedicate their time, energy, and money to fighting it out in the media and political arenas, attempting to pass laws that will settle these issues for everyone.
Reinhardt challenges you to re-conceptualize the world you live in. Whether it confirms your sneaking suspicions or contradicts ideas you’ve always taken for granted, Disintegration will encourage you to consider fresh ideas about how you understand and relate to (or don’t) the people around you, and why things are the way the are.