George Packer. (2021). Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

George Packer. 2021. Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

George Packer, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

George Packer. Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

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1. • value: alexis de tocqueville
2. • value: Conspiracy Theories
3. • value: American democracy
4. • value: fight for equality
5. • value: American inequality
6. • value: wealth disparity
7. • value: democracy in distress
8. • value: 21st century usa
9. • value: art of self-government
10. • value: crisis of collective identity
11. • value: democratic sustainability
12. • value: destructive tribalism
13. • value: failed state america
14. • value: free america concept
15. • value: george packer's socio-political critique
16. • value: inept government response
17. • value: just america perspective
18. • value: narratives in american life
19. • value: national renewal literature
20. • value: national self-esteem
21. • value: pandemic effect on america
22. • value: polarizing protests
23. • value: real america nationalism
24. • value: smart america paradigm

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   • bioText: George Packer is an award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic. His previous books include The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award), The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (winner of the Hitchens Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography). He is also the author of two novels and a play, and the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of George Orwell.
   • name: George Packer

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Last Best Hope

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Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America's descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides.
Democracy seems to be teetering on the edge, and renowned author George Packer shines a spotlight on the fractures that led to today's prevalent feeling of American despair. Last Best Hope is a sharply observed exploration of the narratives that have shaped America: the individualistic Free America, the elitist Smart America, the nationalistic Real America, and Just America, fraught with inter-group oppression.
With the turbulence of 2020 as the backdrop, from the devastating pandemic to economic crises and contentious elections, the book presents an insightful dissection of America's social ethos. Each narrative is explored under his discerning lens, making a case for how they have collectively failed to sustain the country's democracy.
To point a more hopeful way forward, Packer looks for a common American identity and finds it in the passion for equality—the "hidden code"—that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. Today, we are challenged again to fight for equality and renew what Alexis de Tocqueville called the art of self-government. In its strong voice and trenchant analysis, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national renewal.

reviews

1. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 2021
     

     National Book Award winner Packer (The Unwinding) argues that to address their current malaise, Americans must get beyond four suffocating narratives: Libertarian America's focus on individuals determining their own fate while cozying up to corporations; Cosmopolitan America's failure to acknowledge that globalization disenfranchises many residents; Diverse America, which sees the country in terms of identity groups that have inflicted or suffered oppression; and White America, whose misconceived nationalism poses the greatest challenge to democracy. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

     Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 12, 2021
     Warring tribes are tearing the country apart, according to this conflicted meditation on America's discontents. National Book Award winner Packer (The Unwinding) parses the uproar of 2020 in terms of four competing "narratives" of America: the "Free America" of the Republican elite, composed of antigovernment conservatives; the "Smart America" of the liberal, globalist professionals, academics, and journalists who make up the Democratic establishment; the "Real America" of Trump's base of xenophobic white populists; and the "Just America" of "social justice warriors" who see white supremacism everywhere. All these visions, Packer argues, skirt the central problem of economic inequality, and he sketches a vague program of progressive economic and welfare policies, plus mandatory national service, as a means of defusing sociocultural antagonisms. Packer presents sharp, insightful critiques of all sides—for many white, well-educated progressives, he writes, "confessing racial privilege is a way to hang on to class privilege"—but occasionally slips into melodrama: a neighbor's Trump campaign sign reminds him of "an evil shape in a far more serious red and black." Worse, his economic determinism rarely addresses the substance of divisive issues such as immigration, transgender rights, and policing. This eloquent yet unfocused take on American politics further muddies the waters. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     May 15, 2021
     National Book Award-winner Packer explains our current political tensions as the collision of four incompatible narratives about what makes the U.S. special. "Free America" clings to libertarian ideals but downplays vital civic commitments. "Smart America" promises meritocracy but resists attachments to communities. "Real America" celebrates patriotism and populism but indulges racism and xenophobia. "Just America," deep-rooted and ascendant, pushes for social justice but thrives on toxic disillusionment. What's missing from today's discourse, suggests Packer, is a robust shared story about equality, an ideal that has long shaped American self-understanding even when profoundly broken. If we want functional self-governance, he says, we need to reboot the conversation about equality. For inspiration, he points to writer Harriet Jacobs, journalist Horace Greeley, and activist Frances Perkins, each an agent of change in the service of American equality. To some extent, this answers questions about American identity that Packer posed in The Unwinding (2013). But Packer's optimism has been rattled by four years of Trumpism and a botched response to COVID-19, and this book is both an argument and a plea.

     COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     June 1, 2021
     

     The latest by National Book Award winner Packer (The Unwinding) is not the embedded journalism readers have come to expect from him. Instead, he offers an incisive extended essay exploring the current period in U.S. history: at the end of the Trump presidency, in the midst of a global pandemic, and grappling with a racial justice reckoning of a scale not seen since the 1960s. With help from the works of Alexis de Tocqueville, and a critical eye, Packer lays bare large-scale issues plaguing American society and pulls no punches. In his view, there are "Four Americas" pulling the country in different directions: "Free America," "Smart America," "Real America," and "Just America." Packer's persuasive thesis is that these four groups represent fissures within American society that stand in the way of a better country. The latter part of the book uses historical narratives, like those of slavery abolitionist Horace Greeley and Great Depression labor secretary Frances Perkins, to illustrate that the United States has been in dark places before and survived. VERDICT Packer extends an evaluative eye towards every corner of the United States and offers a path for recovery and renewal. A thought-provoking work recommended for history, sociology, and politics readers everywhere.--Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

     Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from April 15, 2021
     Can we save ourselves from ourselves in America's "cold civil war"? As New Yorker contributor and National Book Award winner Packer notes in this sharp and concise analysis, there's one good thing to say about the current pandemic: With its arrival, "it became impossible to pass through the world in the normal bovine manner." Of course, it also revealed massive cracks in the system and amplified a rift in which people either scream at each other or maintain a polite silence, an avoidance that "solves nothing" and indeed, by Packer's account, is "part of the collapse." Something is badly amiss in what used to be thought of as the last best hope in the world. Instead, we are overrun with instability, contending tribes, and useless politicians. Into this chaos stepped Donald Trump, who failed to become the dictator he so obviously wished to be only by virtue of "his own ineptitude, along with our creaky institutions and the remaining democratic faith of the American people." Even so, Packer charges, we're all responsible for Trump, in part because there are yawning gulfs among numerous visions of America. There's the "Free America" of the libertarians, so susceptible to demagoguery; the "Smart America" of the progressives, which leaves blue-collar workers in the dust; the "Real America," a bastion of racism, ignorance, and resentment; and the "Just America," which "forces us to see the straight line that runs from slavery and segregation to the second-class life so many Black Americans live today." In all of these, there are the ingredients of a fifth vision: "Equal America," which involves "extending the New Deal to Americans in more areas of their lives," from affordable and universal health care to a living minimum wage and beyond. It's a project that "asks us to put more faith in ourselves and one another than we can bear," but it surely beats where we are now. A thought-provoking study in civics, history, and the decline and fall of self-government.

     COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America's descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides.
Democracy seems to be teetering on the edge, and renowned author George Packer shines a spotlight on the fractures that led to today's prevalent feeling of American despair. Last Best Hope is a sharply observed exploration of the narratives that have shaped America: the individualistic Free America, the elitist Smart America, the nationalistic Real America, and Just America, fraught with inter-group oppression.
With the turbulence of 2020 as the backdrop, from the devastating pandemic to economic crises and contentious elections, the book presents an insightful dissection of America's social ethos. Each narrative is explored under his discerning lens, making a case for how they have collectively failed to sustain the country's democracy.
To point a more hopeful way...

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Last Best Hope America in Crisis and Renewal

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