Last Best Hope

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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