Presents an assessment of the existential crisis in modern America that explores how increasing social isolation and the collapse of traditional community connections lead to tension and pessimism, arguing that the solution is a rediscovery of human connections.

Residential motels have long been places of last resort for many vulnerable Americans-released prisoners, people with disabilities or mental illness, struggling addicts, the recently homeless, and the working poor. Cast aside by their families and mainstream society, they survive in squalid, unsafe, and demeaning circumstances that few of us can imagine. For a year, the sociologist Christopher P. Dum lived in the Boardwalk Motel to better understand...