The Unwinding

An Inner History of the New America

By: George Packer

Narrated by: Robert Fass

Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

National Book Award, Nonfiction, 2013

A riveting examination of a nation in crisis, from one of the finest political journalists of our generation. American democracy is beset by a sense of crisis. Seismic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, allowing unprecedented freedom while rending the social contract, driving the political system to the verge of breakdown, and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward. In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives.

The Unwinding journeys through the lives of several Americans, including Dean Price, the son of tobacco farmers, who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural South; Tammy Thomas, a factory worker in the Rust Belt trying to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton, a Washington insider oscillating between political idealism and the lure of organized money; and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who questions the Internet’s significance and arrives at a radical vision of the future.

Packer interweaves these intimate stories with biographical sketches of the era’s leading public figures, from Newt Gingrich to Jay-Z, and collages made from newspaper headlines, advertising slogans, and song lyrics that capture the flow of events and their undercurrents. The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation. Packer’s novelistic and kaleidoscopic history of the new America is his most ambitious work to date. Includes bonus content read by the author.

©2013 George Packer (P)2013 Macmillan Audio

I was shocked,

And couldn't stop listening. It just makes so much sense. I love the USA but I am so sad to see this happening.
Then again, great story and great author.

Truly insightful and vitally important!

But I'm extremely horrified to suspect the people who NEED to read this book never will.

Great Reading

Enjoyed these themes and personal histories of people going through the financial crisis of '08-'09

Amazing reportage that approaches high art

Any additional comments?

Nostalgia, reality, mean streets ... the cumulative sweep and power of this book knocked me out. Dozens of interwoven characters, themes, as challenging as the best of mysteries. How did we wind up in a landscape of fast food and bad vibes? The clues are all here.

somewhat disjointed and never pulled together

as noted in the title, this book is somewhat disjointed. 1 struggles to find the actual meaning behind the authors ramblings story or should I say stories. The highlight of this book is the performance. if I had to read it on a paper page or Kindle, it would have been a struggle to get through.

I would recommend other books on a similar topic well before this one.

Great Explanation of What Became the Trump Phenomenon - Pre-Trump

Through anecdote and analysis, great explanation of the 'unwinding' of America due to the Great Recession, de-industrialization, rise of the Tea Party. Book ends about 2011-12 but is still relevant.

Wonder how it's going to end.

As a collection of stories about the lives of ordinary people, it paints a pretty vivid picture of how we have arrived at this point in time. One wonders how we can undo the grim momentum of greed and ignorance. Maybe books like this can help more Americans understand our current predicament.

Unique weaving of stories both famous and not.

I enjoyed this book and debated on the overall rating. Its strong points are that the author skillfully weaves the stories of Americans:both famous (Gingrich, Colin Powell, Joe Biden, Oprah), and not (Dean Price and Tammy Thomas). He is at his best in telling the story of Tammy Thomas, born into relative poverty and a troubled family in Youngstown, Ohio, as that city withered away. Tammy's story is inspirational.

Packer is clearly sympathetic to Democrat's and disdainful of Republicans (he writes for The New Yorker, and Atlantic), but to his credit, unlike many (most) partisans, he seems to have a genuine interest in understanding those who feel differently. The one Republican (nominative) that gets a fawning treatment is Colin Powell, whom he seems to completely excuse for his role in the WMD UN speech. Newt Gingrich and Andrew Breitbart are skewered.

By the same token, not all Democrats escape criticism. Obama, for instance is implicitly criticized for what he failed to do, compared to what he ran on, and his essential sell-out to Wall Street and bowing to insiders like Summers and Geithner (my words, not Packer's, he was softer, but that was the conclusion one gets from what he wrote through his real life characters).

The Democrat who comes across the worst, ironically is the presumptive 2020 Democrat nominee for President, Joe Biden. His story largely is told through the person of Jeff Connaughton, who was first enamored of then Senator Biden, when he invited him to speak at the University of Alabama, while still a student. Connaughton went on to work on Biden's first and second Presidential campaign, as well as a senate campaign (he also worked in the Clinton White House). Over time Connaughton became disillusioned with Biden, describing him as a man who eventually disappointed everyone, and came to see him as lacking in substance. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand comes across as almost saintly.

Another interesting profile is that of venture capitalist, and libertarian, Peter Thiel.

The reader was good, though his inflections and style when giving what appeared to be direct quotes from people seemed to also exacerbate a left-leaning bias of the author, that may not have been so pronounced if one were reading, rather than listening to the book. There are several more people profiled than what I have mentioned in this review and this was an interesting way to tell the story of America from the 1970's thru 2012. In fact in the course of reflecting on the book while creating this review, I have changed my original rating from 2 to 3 stars.

Can't understand the low ratings!

I am not a writer of reviews, but I could not let the low ratings for this book stand unopposed! In "The Unwinding," George Packer follows the lives of a variety of people, as a way to clarify wildly opposing viewpoints about what has happened in American society this last century. Here is history told as vividly as the best fiction, and it won my sympathy for people I would be unlikely to meet. A few high-profile people (like Oprah) come into the narrative. But some of the most revealing chapters cover U.S. citizens who seek meaning and success, work hard, "do everything right," and rarely make the headlines. I would recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone, with any political belief, who is trying to make sense of what it means to live in the U.S.A.!

Brilliant!

Everyone should listen to this book. Right AND left. Perfect description and history of the evisceration of the US middle class by the elected and non-elected powers that be in the US. Makes the solutions obvious. A brilliant, subtle, "come together" theme.