Last best hope : America in crisis and renewal / George Packer.
Material type:
SoundPublisher number: 13777094Publication details: [New York] : Macmillan Audio, 2021.Edition: UnabridgedDescription: 6 audio discs (approximately 6.5 hr.) ; 4 3/4 inContent type: - spoken word
- audio
- audio disc
- 9781250816115
- 1250816114
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Audiobook
|
Main Library | Audiobook | 973.93 P119 | Available | 33111009933298 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
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
Title from container.
Read by the author.
Compact discs.
Combining reportage with historical narrative, autobiography, and political analysis, Packer depicts and assesses the four inadequate narratives that dominate American public life: Libertarian America, which imagines a nation of individuals responsible for their own fate, and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Cosmopolitan America, the ideology of Silicon Valley and the professional elite, which celebrates globalization and leaves many American communities behind ; Diverse America, which defines citizens as members of large identity groups that have inflicted or suffered oppression; and White America, a shallow nationalism that fears the contamination of non-whites and treachery of coastal elites, and poses the greatest threat to democracy in our lifetime.