After hearing about this book on NPR's Morning Edition and Tom Ashbrook's On-Point, I decided it sounded like a book I needed to read. I tried to approach it with the caution that a possibly over-hyped new book about current events deserves. As I am not a journalist, historian, or economist, I'm... ...more
Packer writes like a dream and those who know him from his articles in The New Yorker will find more of his astute eye and ability to conjure character in a handful of details in this thrilling series of portraits of Americans over the past four decades.
”No one can say when the unwinding began – when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way. Like any great change, the unwinding began at countless times, in countless ways – and at some moment the country, always the same country, crossed a lin......more
If you're trying to figure out what happened to "Yes we can!" Barack Obama's winning motto in the 2008 presidential campaign, you might want to take a pee... ...more
I never had an idea of what my life was supposed to be. I had dreams -- too vague to be ambitions -- but nobody ever handed me the keys to a life and told me to drive away into the future. So at some point I found myself in the future and, looking around, I had to ask how did I get here?
George Packer returned from several years overseas writing about problems of the United States in the world, never imagining that the United States would become his next subject. But he was appalled with the condition of America when he returned and wondered what had happened to our forward momen... ...more
Packer follows the lives of three people from 1978 through 2012, filling in with many side vignettes to illustrate the dramatic changes in middle class life. We see how people lost their jobs and their homes caught up in the boom and bust cycles of the period. We see how powerful corporations and... ...more
Let me tell you a story: after World War II, the United States--having survived the world's bloodiest conflict largely unscathed--began an economic Golden Age. While taxes were high (91% top marginal rate in the 1950s), America was thriving. Our standard of living became the envy of the world. Ou... ...more
Parts of The Unwinding I enjoyed (the account of the Occupy Wall St movement through the perspective of one organizer and one participant, and the Elizabeth Warren portrait, for example); other parts bored me nearly to tears (please not Jeff Connaugton again); and one section actually did bring m... ...more
This is a high-quality book that would undoubtedly be more interesting to read twenty years from now. Packer intersperses capsule portraits of the rich and powerful (Peter Thiel, Newt Gingrich, Jay-Z) with longer narratives about ordinary people in Youngstown, OH; North Carolina; Tampa; and even... ...more