Modernity presents itself as an age of increasing social disintegration: secularization and rationalization, urbanization and globalization, individualization and digitalization make it difficult for communities today. Modernity comes with desirable promises that make it attractive, but it does not come free: Its price is escalating modern loneliness. Denis Newiak tells a cultural history of modernization that, from industrialization to the late-modern network society, produces ever new and harsher experiences of loneliness.