This book challenges they myth that Americans' emphasis on personal fulfillment necessarily weakens commitment to the common good. Drawing on his extensive ethnographic research on a variety of environmentalist groups, Paul Lichterman argues that individualism sometimes enhances public, political commitment.

1. Personalism and political commitment; 2. Personalized politics: the case of the US Greens; 3. Speaking out in suburbia; 4. Imagining community, organizing community; 5. Culture, class, and life-ways of activism; 6. Personalized politics and cultural radicalism since the 1960s; 7. The search for political community; Appendices.