David Keyes

Keyes identifies what is happening to us and our communities, and the examples he uses are sharp and clear. The word “community” is dropped so often in our talking that possibly it has become fuzzy in our minds. It’s good that someone such as Ralph Keyes has taken this journey and observed and written about …

We, the Lonely People is an exciting book about the American society of today … There is humor and pathos in the knowledgeable observations of the author and in the documented human interest discussions.

A sensitive discussion of our “loss of community” and its resulting loneliness.

Here is a profoundly moving book, full of relevant information about the ambivalence of most of us in America today who want both freedom and community and find it hard to experience them together.

Keyes’s provocative analysis of modern urban life … has suggested that within anonymous, impersonal, and lonely environs, “community” assumes different forms … Git and Go’s, 7-Elevens, and shopping centers replace kinship and geographically specific tribal locations.

Bill Moyers’s former assistant at Newsday, a self-described “habitual comer and goer” skillfully and entertainingly explores our social and individual ambivalence toward community, from Long Island to San Diego. … Keyes’s thesis that we are inhibited from finding community by our desire for mobility, privacy, and convenience is well documented … Recommended.