“Rich Harwood refuses to give up on the American experiment. He’s spent decades working in some of the country’s most challenging local communities and has a message today for those alarmed by the nation’s polarization. Change will come, but it has to be from the bottom up. Starting in our neighborhoods, towns, and cities, we must learn again to trust one another, to listen to one another, and to realize the hardest problems will take time to solve. In The New Civic Path, he reminds us what’s at stake is nothing less than our own future.”

—Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent, PBS NewsHour: America at a Crossroads

“In this gripping guide to civic renewal, Rich Harwood provides readers with inspiration, insights, and tools we can all draw upon to restore trust in our fellow citizens and faith in our cherished civic institutions. At a time when national reconciliation and repair feels especially daunting, Harwood’s book encourages and empowers us to act as agents of transformative change in our local communities. As more and more communities join this ‘new civic path,’ Harwood explains, we travel toward a stronger, more patriotic, and more unified future for the country as a whole.”

—Kristin Hansen, executive director, Civic Health Project

“Worried about American democratic decline? Then stop fighting. Stop withdrawing. Start building—as citizens of your local community! Rich Harwood’s new manifesto summons a path to civic renewal hidden below today’s national partisan brawls. Four decades of working with communities of all political persuasions has taught Harwood the historic nature of democracy’s deepest DNA: Ordinary people joining together to tackle the urgent, practical problems of their collective, everyday lives. The New Civic Path now offers those lessons to us—if we have the courage to learn and act with one another as fellow citizens.”

—Brook Manville, co-author, The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives