Last Best Hope

America in Crisis and Renewal

By: George Packer

Narrated by: George Packer

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

Concise.

concise. but covers enough history to gather the many threads as to the who, what and whys.

authors narration is very good. a pleasing timbre.

Insightful and thought-provoking

Is it possible for any human being to accurately sum up a society as conflicted and contradictory as ours? I'm doubtful, but George Packer's book is insightful and thought-provoking. My favorite chapter was the one called Equalizers, in which the author tells the stories of three American reformers (Horace Greeley, Frances Perkins, and Bayard Rustin), reflecting on their times and making trenchant comparisons to ours.

A very thoughtful and compelling book!

Every American needs to read this wonderful book
It is a book I will read twice.

Great insights

Hard words for tough times. wonder who will read it on the "other" side? The story remains unfinished.

this puts things in perspective

I loved the story and it really got me thinking. very saddening facts at times. my take away is that there is always hope if people just come together and converse.
just find people unlike you, have dinner with them and all will be fine.