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

With eye-opening statistics, original data, and vivid portraits of people who live alone, renowned sociologist Eric Klinenberg upends conventional wisdom to deliver the definitive take on how the rise of going solo is transforming the American experience.

Klinenberg shows that most single dwellers—whether in their twenties or eighties—are deeply engaged in social and civic life. There's even evidence that people who live alone enjoy better mental health and have more environmentally sustainable lifestyles. Drawing on more than three hundred in-depth interviews, Klinenberg presents a revelatory examination of the most significant demographic shift since the baby boom and offers surprising insights on the benefits of this epochal change.

Eric Klinenberg is a professor of sociology at New York University and the editor of the journal Public Culture. He is the author of Heat Wave, which won several scholarly and literary prizes and was declared a "Favorite Book" by the Chicago Tribune, and 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed. His research has been heralded in The New Yorker and on CNN and NPR, and his stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and on This American Life.