Last Best Hope, George Packer
Last Best Hope, George Packer
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Last Best Hope
America in Crisis and Renewal

Author: George Packer

Narrator: George Packer

Unabridged: 6 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/15/2021


Synopsis

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.

This program is read by the author.

In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem. A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. With pitiless precision, the year exposed the nation’s underlying conditions—discredited elites, weakened institutions, blatant inequalities—and how difficult they are to remedy.

In Last Best Hope, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. He explores the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Smart America, the world view of Silicon Valley and the professional elite; Real America, the white Christian nationalism of the heartland; and Just America, which sees citizens as members of identity groups that inflict or suffer oppression.

In lively and biting prose, Packer shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy. To point a more hopeful way forward, he 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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About George Packer

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Linda on August 25, 2021

In Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, National Book Award-winning journalist George Packer analyzes America's current polarization and paralysis. As with other works that examine our current malaise, his analysis of the roots of the problem is astute. Yet, his solutions, while viable, se......more

Goodreads review by Caren on April 16, 2021

For all of us still trying to process the year we have just lived through, Mr. Packer's analysis will help clarify intuitions you may have had. The pandemic really did shine a light on problems within our society. Those problems will still be there when the pandemic subsides. This book is not long a......more

Goodreads review by Wick on December 31, 2021

We're rotting. This is not a bad post-Trump era commentary on our current circumstances of white nationalism, atomized social groups, group identity epistemology and left cultural authoritarianism. I've probably read one too many books like this at this point so this wasn't particularly profound for......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on June 24, 2021

If you had to summarize the current crisis in American politics using just one phrase, a good candidate would be the inability to embrace a shared national narrative. Several competing and incompatible ideologies are not only pulling us in different directions, but also preventing us from engaging i......more

Goodreads review by Feng on July 26, 2021

In this book, George Packer proposed his theory of why America is in such a political polarization and what we should do to make it better. The main part of the book is explaining the political split of America. This part was recaptured by the author’s article on The Atlantic [URL not allowed]......more


Awards

  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
  • NPR Best Book of the Year