The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America [Hardcover] George Packer - Hardcover

George Packer

4.13

12,056 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571251285 ISBN 13: 9780571251285

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2013

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HardCover. Pub Date :2013-06-13 Pages: 447 Language: English Publisher: Faber and Faber Just over a decade into the new millennium. America is beset by a sense of crisis The seismic shifts that occurred in the space of a generation. have created a country of winners and losers. leaving the social contract in pieces. In The Unwinding. George Packer narrates the story of America over the past three decades. bringing to the task his empathy with people facing difficult challenges. his sharp eye for detail and a gift for weaving together engaging narratives.The Unwinding moves deftly back and forth through the lives of half a dozen characters. including Dean Price. the son of tobacco farmers who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural South; Tammy Thomas. a factory worker in the industrial Midwest trying to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton. a Washi...

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About the Author:

George Packer writes for the New Yorker and lives in Brooklyn. The Assassin's Gate, his celebrated account of how America convinced itself to go to war with Iraq, is published by Faber, was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the New York Times and won the Helen Bernstein Book Award and an Overseas Press Club's book award. He is also the author of two novels, and two works of non-fiction, The Village of Waiting and Blood of the Liberals.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* How have we come to feel that neither the government nor the private sector works as it should and that the shrinking middle class has few prospects of recovering its former glory? Through profiles of several Americans, from a factory worker to an Internet billionaire, Packer, staff writer for the New Yorker, offers a broad and compelling perspective on a nation in crisis. Packer focuses on the lives of a North Carolina evangelist, son of a tobacco farmer, pondering the new economy of the rural South; a Youngstown, Ohio, factory worker struggling to survive the decline of the manufacturing sector; a Washington lobbyist confronting the distance between his ideals and the realities of the nation’s capital; and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur pondering the role of e-commerce in a radically changing economy. Interspersed throughout are profiles of leading economic, political, and cultural figures, including Newt Gingrich, Colin Powell, Raymond Carver, Sam Walton, and Jay-Z. Also sprinkled throughout are alarming headlines, news bites, song lyrics, and slogans that capture the unsettling feeling that the nation and its people are adrift. Packer offers an illuminating, in-depth, sometimes frightening view of the complexities of decline and the enduring hope for recovery. --Vanessa Bush

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