The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

by George Packer

Through an examination of the lives of several Americans and leading public figures over the past three decades, Packer portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.

• ISBN10: 1466836954
• ISBN13: 9781466836952
• Publish Date: 21 May 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 448
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

This did not get off on the right foot with me. It started off in Stokes County, where I know every road and place he names because I was born and raised one county over and have lived here my whole life. When the tone got under my skin in record time— condescension, cliches, the usual— I went to the non-Stokes chapters, and they were worse.

I just can’t do that subtle NPR signaling of “us” and “them” without any attempt at real understanding. Sorry. I’m one of the “them,” and there are too many writers that do justice to the complexities, hypocrisies, and plight of the region to put up with the ones full of their own agenda. This book exists to reinforce the echo chambers, and I don’t want any part of it.

I’m not sure whether it was better or worse than Hillbilly Elegy, though, so there’s that.