How the pandemic exposes rifts in America that exist among regions, races and classes
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Despite the successful passage of the Senate's bipartisan infrastructure bill, Washington is still a city known for polarization. But as author George Packer recently explained in an interview with Judy Woodruff, the divisions in our country are greater and deeper than we realize.
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In the great tradition of Richard Hofstadter, but with a reporter's eye, George Packer has given us a thoughtful and ultimately hopeful book about crisis and opportunity. -- Jon Meacham, author of His Truth Is Marching On and The Soul of America
George Packer has written a small but big book. The end of the pandemic should be pure joy, but the fact that a public health crisis deepened our divisions has weighed down our hearts. Is there anything that could glue us together as one people? Packer answers yes. And the case he makes in doing so provides the vaccine I have most wanted - hope. -- Atul Gawande, surgeon and author of Being Mortal and The Checklist Manifesto
In Last Best Hope, George Packer retells the story of 2020, offering an original account of the fracturing of [America's] mind and suggesting how we might restore unity. Ranging from Tocqueville to Trump, this extended essay will provoke you to think harder about America's past as well as America's future. -- Anne Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy and Gulag
In the summer of 2020, America seemed to divide into two different nations. Anyone who observed the crack-up will cherish this flinty analysis, which offers new insights into how Americans from Frances Perkins to Bayard Rustin to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol have understood and defined freedom. The result is a clear-eyed explanation of how a progressive nation can be a unified one. -- John H. McWhorter, professor of linguistics at Columbia University, contributing editor at The Atlantic, and host of Slate’s Lexicon Valley
[An] incisive, deftly argued book. -- Peter Conrad ― Observer
About the Author
George Packer is a staff writer for the Atlantic and a former staff writer for the New Yorker. He is the author of The Unwinding- Thirty Years of American Decline, which was a New York Times bestseller and won a National Book Award. His other nonfiction books include The Assassins' Gate- America in Iraq, Blood of the Liberals, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and Our Man- Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, which won the Los Angeles Times Biography Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. He has also written two novels, The Half Man and Central Square. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Harper's, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Product details
Publisher : JONATHAN CAPE & BH - TRADE (31 August 2021)
Language : English
Hardcover : 240 pages
ISBN-10 : 1787333426
ISBN-13 : 978-1787333420
Dimensions : 14.4 x 2.5 x 22.2 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 29,857 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
35 in Comparative Politics
297 in Social History
29,447 in Textbooks & Study Guides
Customer Reviews: 4.3 out of 5 stars 84 ratings
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4.0 out of 5 stars Blunt, bleak and bold
Reviewed in Australia on 28 July 2021
If you want a reality check on the status of democracy and polarisation, then read the chapter titled ‘Strange Defeat’ in George Packer’s new book. Spoiler – it’s bleak! In an incisive and direct manner, the award-winning journalist has penned a concise ‘no holds barred’ summary of what it was like to experience 2020 if you were an educated worker living in a wealthy, western democracy during a global pandemic. While the book’s main conceit is to explain the causes of how the USA got to an uber state of polarisation, the drivers will resonate to Australians, Canadians, French etc. Leaving nothing in the sheds, Packer submits there are 4 camps all vying for supremacy in modern wealthy democracies, those committed to liberty (Free America), meritocracy (Smart America), populism (Real America) and identity (unJust America). Having identified all that’s wrong with the US, Packer devotes the last section of his book to profiling 3 inspiring 20th century citizen reformers and then listing a series of major policy reforms that will ‘make America again’. Agree or not, Packer is a skilled writer.
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Martin
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting analysis of an existential problem
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 July 2021
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Enjoyed reading the author's take on the problems facing the United States - and noticing the many parallels with the UK too.
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C
2.0 out of 5 stars I had HOPED for more... not sure who this book is for.
Reviewed in the United States on 17 June 2021
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I'm really not sure what the point of this book is.
First let me say, that in general I try to say politically neutral; but especially when reviewing books. I won't immediately rate a book as terrible or wonderful simply because of the author's political viewpoints; I'm more interested in whether or not there are valid points made, or if I feel more informed after reading it.
I got the impression from the description of this book, that it was an attempt to unify people and help bring together a divided nation. After reading the first few pages however, that is clearly not the case. The author has already offended about half of the country by the end of the first chapter, and even the people that would agree with him politically probably don't need a play-by-play rehashing of how awful things were in 2020. I am not sure who this book is even for, or what the author was attempting to accomplish. Most of the beginning of the book is just “This was terrible, wasn't it terrible? It was SO terrible, like, historically terrible” I always try to finish every book that I start, but this one was difficult to get through.
I pushed on and read through the author's explanations of the four different narratives, sometimes overlapping, that have been accounts of America's “moral identity.” I understand each of the narratives that Packer describes: Free America, Smart America, Real America, and Just America; and while I can see the ideas behind his analysis of these narratives, they seem at best oversimplified, and at worst just super biased by his personal beliefs.
Packer's solution seems to be Equal America, as he proposes rallying behind our national love of equality as a unifying force. This chapter contends that equality is the defining trait of Americans that we all share, and this perhaps is a starting point to bridge political gaps.
I try to find some value in everything that I take the time to read, and in this case, I did learn a few interesting pieces of history, like the lives of Horace Greeley and Frances Perkins.
Overall, I think that this book utterly fails at creating any sort of message that would unify a divided nation; and in fact I think that more than half of the population of the country would be at least annoyed if not offended by the book. There are very few proposed changes at the end of the book, like expanding the estate tax, and there are only a few pages even devoted to any solutions at all. After reading this book I really struggled to imagine anyone being convinced by the author's arguments to change their perspective. At least I learned a few interesting historical facts.
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Dick_Burkhart
5.0 out of 5 stars Equality, not Ideology
Reviewed in the United States on 23 June 2021
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In this amazing, popular book, 'Atlantic' writer George Packer cuts to the chase: Economic inequality is destroying America, but this devastation has driven the activist population into four ideological camps, each feeding the others and paralyzing the nation through dubious theories of blame and redemption. Two of these camps are Smart America (the meritocracy) and Just America (social justice youth), both driving the Democratic Party. The other two are Free America (libertarian types) and Real America (traditionalists), driving the Republican Party.
This is a tale of narcissism and classism run amok, but carefully hidden behind barriers of privilege. Of grinding inequality destroying communities while zealots demonize “the other”. As Packer puts it, “The American people have grown used to parasites attaching themselves at the top of our democracy and sucking its lifeblood.” Meanwhile “Sexting with a staffer does more harm to a politician than profiteering in a national crisis” (p 22).
But the real damage is much deeper: Real America hates the hypocritical and condescending elites of Smart America and Just America so much that they love Trump even for his lies, just for sticking it to the elites. Even when “Trump saw the federal government as property he’d acquired by winning the election” (p 26) they didn’t object. Trust in the system had broken down. The same was true for COVID-19: “It didn’t matter what the experts said. The populists refused to believe them because they were experts” (p 31).
Thus “destruction of a shared reality does more damage than economic decline or impeachable acts” and “once politics becomes an identity clash or tribal war, a death spiral can set in” (p 32). Yet Packer sees hope in US history. We’ve been here before – the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, Vietnam and Civil Rights. In his later chapters he narrates the captivating stories of three activists who accomplished big things but kept their balance - their desire to reconcile the ideological camps of their day. These were Horace Greeley (anti-slavery publisher), Francis Perkins (architect of the New Deal), and Bayard Rustin (strategist of the Civil Rights era).
Packer takes issue with all four of the ideological “Americas” but especially with the most recent addition, now sweeping the country – Just America – in an attempt to bring it back to sanity before it causes more damage. The proximal cause has been the Black Lives Matter protests, especially over the death of George Floyd. But Packer puts this in an historical context, “at once utopian and nihilistic”, going back to our Puritan ancestors: “These awakenings can take on the contours of religious experience, a particularly American one – sin, denunciation, confession, atonement, redemption, heresy hunting, book burning, and the dream of paradise” (p 53).
I note that the black public intellectual John McWhorter actually sees Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a kind of religion. And Packer cites the key dogma of CRT - that students are now being taught that “racism is not a matter of individual wrong but a system in which everyone is enmeshed regardless of conduct or intent.” Then the CRT experts revived the phrase white supremacy and “applied it to liberal newspapers and foundations” (p 54).
I note that the underlying purpose here was to weaponize these words, which, as commonly understood, describe a reality in terminal decline. Now any person identified as “white” could be attacked and beaten down with the clubs of racism and white supremacy if they did not abide by the latest linguistic or doctrinal orthodoxies of CRT. The immediate effect has been a cancel culture reminiscent of fundamentalist / totalitarian / fascist / McCarthyite thought-control but the bigger political effect has been to throw gasoline on the fires of the cultural wars with Real America – especially the white working class. At one point Packer even uses the phrase “cultural revolution” (just think what that meant in Maoist China).
But why this craziness? Packer’s first answer is that our meritocratic youth had justifiably lost faith in the system due to the foreign policy debacle of the Iraq War, followed by the financial crash of 2008. But they also saw “below them, lousy schools, overflowing prisons, dying neighborhoods”, while themselves being “loaded with debt”, with meager opportunities, while “planetary destruction bore down” (p 119). The result has been a deep cynicism, with America “less a project of self-government to improved than a site of continuous wrong to be battled” (p 120).
And, after-all, they had been taught the tenets of Critical Theory for a generation, upending “the universal values of the Enlightenment: objectivity, rationality, science, equality and freedom of the individual”. Instead it is assumed that “these liberal values are an ideology by which dominant groups subjugate other groups”. Here “all relations are power relations” with the focus on “language and identity more than material conditions”, centered around subjectivity “in place" of objective reality” (p 121), especially the “lived experienced of the oppressed”.
Packer concludes that “the fixed lens of power makes true equality, based on common humanity, impossible”. This locks us into a caste system where it’s not about physical suffering, but purported “psychological trauma, harm from speech and texts, the sense of alienation that minorities feel in constant exposure to a dominant culture” (p 123). People are reduced to acting in “performance spaces” when “it would be far better to have real conversations between two people” (p 128) about objective reality, not theatrical poses and slogans.
Instead in organizations we get “monolithic group thought, hostility to open debate, and moral coercion”. The sad result is that “grand systemic analysis usually ends up in small symbolic policies” (p 130) instead of the slow, hard work of productive change. To top this off, “Just America is a narrative of the young and well educated, which is why it continually misreads or ignores the Black and Latino working classes” (p 131).
While CRT is nominally a “repudiation of the meritocracy” it is blind to how “confessing racial privilege is a way to hang on to class privilege” (p 132). Meanwhile the key to its success is white, meritocratic guilt: “Achievement is a fragile basis for moral identity, [so] when meritocrats are accused of racism they have no solid faith in their own worth to stand on”. That is, “Smart American abdicated to Just America” (p 133). The result is that we are now in a post-liberal era where “justice is power” (p 134), a zero-sum game of power plays rather than justice for the least among us, ennobling all.
Packer’s final verdict is that Just America is a “dead-end street. Its origins in theory, its intolerant dogma, and its coercive tactics remind me of left-wing ideology in the 1930s. Liberalism as white supremacy recalls the Communist Party’s attack on social democracy as ‘social fascism’ (p 137). But Smart America, Free America, and Real America are also dead-ends, so we see a pitting of “tribe against tribe” with each narrative cramped into “an ever more extreme version of itself” (p 138). All of these tribes “anoint winners and losers” but the reality is that without equality, of at least dignity, “America doesn’t work” (p 139).
Thus in his final chapters Packer outlines some of the measures that will restore a more egalitarian society. There are no miracle cures here, just the hard work of things like universal health care and voting rights. But it will require giving up both American exceptionalism and its mirror image – American moral defeatism. He even suggests restoring a sense of patriotism in good government to find common ground between Real America and Just America.
Sectoral unions could restore the dignity and power of our essential workers. But a new national identity is needed based on the restoration of our liberal values - in the context of celebrating our ever evolving multi-cultural roots – European, Indigenous, African, Asian, and Hispanic, of myriad varieties. Packer proclaims that “the solution to individualism is not religion or human fellowship or central planning – it’s self-government” itself, yet without equality “there is no longer any basis for shared citizenship” (p 161).
Fortunately, America is now headed in the right direction – with rising wages in many sectors, a sudden increase in job mobility, and a Green New Deal on the horizon. But governance remains precarious, still blocking needed socio-economic reforms that privilege the few at the expense of the many. On the plus side bipartisanship is starting to emerge in unlikely places, such as ending Middle East wars and the revival of anti-trust laws.
The growing backlash against the excesses of Just America is forging new alliances across old party lines. Moral integrity and critical thinking skills are now being energized against unhinged ideologies, both new and old. Packer also hints at how this will help restore the international standing of the US, but a new global order remains to be envisioned.
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Kerry Walters
5.0 out of 5 stars Typology of American Tribalism
Reviewed in the United States on 20 June 2021
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I find it hard to believe that the first reviewer and I read the same book. Packer's analysis of the four American tribes currently vying with one another is brilliantly insightful. His suggestions for ameliorating the factionalism towards the end of the book isn't necessarily original, but that doesn't make it any less valuable. This eminently readable book is as important as it is timely.
45 people found this helpful
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Edgeek
5.0 out of 5 stars An Awesome Read
Reviewed in the United States on 19 June 2021
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I recommend that everyone a this book now. We need to stop living in our silos, and reach out to those we think we despise and find common ground.
20 people found this helpful
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=====
George Packer
George Packer | |
|---|---|
 George Packer at the 2013 Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | August 13, 1960 Santa Clara, California, U.S. |
| Occupation |
|
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Yale College (1982) |
| Notable works | The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq |
| Notable awards | National Book Award for Nonfiction in November 2013 for The Unwinding |
| Spouse | Michele Millon (?-?) Laura Secor (present) |
George Packer (born August 13, 1960) is a US journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his writings for The New Yorker and The Atlantic about U.S. foreign policy and for his book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. Packer also wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of the USA from 1978 to 2012. In November 2013, The Unwinding received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. His award winning biography, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, was released in May 2019. His latest book, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal was released in June 2021.
Early life and education[edit]
Packer was born in Santa Clara, California.[1] His parents taught at Stanford University: his mother, Nancy Packer (née Huddleston), was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in the Creative Writing Program and later professor of English, and his father, Herbert L. Packer, was a distinguished professor of law, and the author of numerous books and articles. Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, Sr., had served eleven successive terms (1915–1937) representing Alabama's 9th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. His uncle, George Huddleston, Jr., succeeded to his father's seat in the House of Representatives from 1954 to 1964.[2] Packer's sister, Ann Packer, also is a writer. Their father's background was Jewish and their mother's Christian.[3] Packer is married to writer and editor Laura Secor and was married to Michele Millon.
Packer graduated from Yale College in 1982, where he resided at Calhoun College (now called Grace Hopper College).[4] He served in the Peace Corps in Togo.[2]
Career[edit]
His essays and articles have appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, World Affairs, Harper's, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Packer was a columnist for Mother Jones and was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 2003 to 2018. He now writes for The Atlantic.[5]
Packer was a Holtzbrinck Fellow Class of Fall 2009 at the American Academy in Berlin.[6]
His 2005 book entitled The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq analyzes the events that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and reports on subsequent developments in that country, largely based on interviews with ordinary Iraqis. He was a supporter of the Iraq war. He was a finalist for the 2004 Michael Kelly Award.
In July 2013 the New Yorker Festival released a video entitled Geoffrey Canada on Giving Voice to the Have-nots, of a panel that was moderated by George Packer. Along with Canada, the panelists included Abhijit Banerjee, Katherine Boo, and Jose Antonio Vargas.[7]
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, focuses on the ways that America changed in the years between 1978 and 2012. The book achieves this mainly by tracing the lives of various individuals from different backgrounds through the years. Interspersed are capsule biographies of influential figures of the time such as Colin Powell, Newt Gingrich, Elizabeth Warren, Jay-Z, and Raymond Carver.
In 2019, Packer released a 600-page book titled Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century. It's a full-scale scholarly biography of Richard Holbrooke, one of the most influential U.S. diplomats of the late 20th Century.[8]
Awards and honors[edit]
- 2005 Cornelius Ryan Award, The Assassin's Gate[9]
- 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction, The Unwinding[10][11]
- 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) shortlist for The Unwinding[12]
- 2017 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to complete Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century[13]
- 2019 Hitchens Prize [14] Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century[15]
- 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (biography) for Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century[16]
- 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century[16]
Affiliations[edit]
Packer is a member of the international board of directors of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.[17]
Bibliography[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ "California Birth Index | CaliforniaBirthIndex.org". www.californiabirthindex.org. Retrieved 2021-08-04.
- ^ a b David Glenn, "Unfinished Wars", Columbia Journalism Review, September 2005.
- ^ Jack Hitt (August 27, 2000). "Keeping the Faith". The New York Times.
- ^ 1982 Yale Banner, p. 377.
- ^ "Finalist: George Packer (Biography)". The Michael Kelly Award. Archived from the original on 2007-06-08.
- ^ "George Packer". American Academy. Retrieved 2021-06-21.
- ^ "Geoffrey Canada on Giving Voice to the Have-nots", The New Yorker Festival.
- ^ Bloomfield, Steve (2019-05-02). "Our Man by George Packer review – Richard Holbrooke and American power". The Guardian. Retrieved 2019-08-26.
- ^ "2005 OPC Award Winners". opcofamerica.org. April 20, 2006. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
- ^ Clare Swanson (November 20, 2013). "2013 National Book Awards Go to McBride, Packer, Szybist, Kadohata". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
- ^ "James McBride, George Packer win National Book Awards". The Washington Post. November 21, 2013. Archived from the original on November 21, 2013. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
- ^ "Announcing the National Book Critics Awards Finalists for Publishing Year 2013". National Book Critics Circle. January 14, 2014. Retrieved January 14, 2014.
- ^ Whiting Foundation. "2017 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grantee: George Packer". Whiting.org. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
- ^ "2019 Prize". The Dennis & Victoria Ross Foundation.
- ^ Last Best Hope / George Packer. "author's page". Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 13 June 2021.
- ^ a b >"George Packer". us.Macmillan.com. Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
- ^ "About". Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
External links[edit]
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