Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer
diagnoses America's descent into a failed state, and envisions a
path toward overcoming injustices, paralyses, and divides How, in a
few decades, did the United States transform from a broadly
prosperous middle-class country, with relatively healthy
institutions and competent leaders, to a nation defined by
discredited elites, hollowed-out institutions, and blatant
inequalities-feared and pitied by our friends, mocked and sabotaged
by our adversaries, first in the world in Covid cases and deaths,
and led in recent years by an incompetent authoritarian bigot? Last
Best Hope is a bracing account of our current crisis and of how a
new era of civic revitalization may bring it to an end. 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.
At a time when many fear that the American experiment in
self-government may collapse, or, in Abraham Lincoln's words, "die
by suicide", Packer shows that none of these narratives can sustain
American democracy. To point a better way forward, he looks back at
previous eras of crisis to discover the resources for invigorating
self-government. Combining trenchant social analysis with a vibrant
and stinging essayistic voice and a deep knowledge of America's
past and present, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to
the literature of national self-examination the times demand.
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