Last Best Hope
America in Crisis and Renewal
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4.3 • 40 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Saving democracy
A brilliant analysis of the America that was, is and can be. Packer mixes hope and despair, reminding us that together we stand, while divided we fall. Read it for your own good.
A beacon of hope
Begins with a sharp dissection of the current state of the United States, framed by historical parallels, and ends with a prescription for the path forward.