Last best hope : America in crisis and renewal / George Packer.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First editionDescription: 226 pages ; 22 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780374603663
- 0374603669
- America in crisis and renewal
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 973.933 P119 | Available | 33111010512099 |
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.
Democracy seems to be teetering on the edge, and renowned author George Packer shines a spotlight on the fractures that led to today's prevalent feeling of American despair. Last Best Hope is a sharply observed exploration of the narratives that have shaped America: the individualistic Free America, the elitist Smart America, the nationalistic Real America, and Just America, fraught with inter-group oppression.
With the turbulence of 2020 as the backdrop, from the devastating pandemic to economic crises and contentious elections, the book presents an insightful dissection of America's social ethos. Each narrative is explored under his discerning lens, making a case for how they have collectively failed to sustain the country's democracy.
To point a more hopeful way forward, Packer 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.
"Portions of this work originally appeared in The Atlantic and The New Yorker." --Title page verso.
2020: 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. Packer explores 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. He shows that none of these narratives can sustain a democracy: we must look for a common American identity and find it in the passion for equality that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. -- adapted from jacket
Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-224).
Prologue -- Strange defeat -- Four Americas -- Equal America -- Equalizers -- Make America again -- Epilogue.