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Last Best Hope
- America in Crisis and Renewal
- Narrated by: George Packer
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
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Publisher's summary
2021 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
2021 New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
2021 NPR Best Book of the Year
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
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- Bill Lauderback
- 07-13-21
Terribly disappointing
While George Packer’s Last Best Hope received a glowing review in The Atlantic, the actual reading of the book left me disappointed, coupled with a bit of depression and anger for having hoped there was some semblance truth to be found. If one is seeking an intellectually honest assessment of the profound political, cultural, racial and economic divide in the United States, Mr. Packer fails miserably. He engages in a narrative which ridicules conservative ideology born of classical liberalism while offering zero critique of the left, its abandonment of liberal tradition and its attraction to an authoritarian utopia. If you agree with Marx and Engels assessment of class struggle, you’ll love Packer.
In short, Mr. Packer has published a rambling, at times slobbering, diatribe, dripping with contempt for anyone who has a different world view than his own.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Midwest Grandpa
- 06-16-21
Excellent analysis of complex problems in US.
Thorough & carefully done. Last chapter & epilogue reward readers' efforts. Compelling thoughtprovoking inspiring read.
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- marwalk
- 07-04-21
This is us decoded—who's up to that task?
America, this is you; this is us decoded. No matter who you are, or what your socioeconomic perspective, George Packer provides in this book the most insightful explanation I have seen of why some people behave in inexplicable ways and believe in demonstrably false premises. Avoiding the posture of a progressive rant against the usual suspects, Packer effectively presents an objective break down of how American democracy is in fact in peril—from forces that were active even prior to the founding of the United States.
Packer documents well the fissures throughout American history, categorizing four recognizable groups in our contemporary time:
1. Free America, as in neoliberal and libertarian, I've got mine and your problems are your own fault, and concern for individual freedom overrides any recognition that the actual market is far from free.
2. Smart America, I've got the creds at least in my narrow specialty, a world where skewed meritocracy is simultaneously foundational and precarious, and why can't everyone else be smart like me (emphasis on like me).
3. Real America, basically rural whites and others who think like them, often whose sense of reality is conjured by right wing media, a world of cohabiting inferiority and superiority complexes, where loyalty overrides logic.
4. Justice America, the driver of identity based cancel culture that has jumped the fence of academia and infected business and society in general, although properly promoting marginalized groups sometimes ignored by preceding Liberals they are selective themselves on which causes to champion, refusing the wisdom of progressive giants in history in emphasizing separate identity over common economic justice.
Packer's antidote for these fissures is the art of self-government, explained as community interaction at the local level—which would provide the foundation for healing at the state and federal levels. This would be accomplished by people of the different categories interacting with each other on matters other than what separates them—with the intended result that they begin to see each other as fellow humans. This cannot be just "both sidesism," as one can still affirm another's human agency without legitimizing their false premises.
I found this book short on solutions to the problems Packer so skillfully describes. All the human interaction that is possible is still limited as long as well funded promulgators of fallacy based propaganda continue to influence large sections of society. Those in each category will need to see those in the other categories as fellow humans, looking past their (obvious to themselves) ignorance and intolerance. Someone or something will need to facilitate such inter-category interaction—who's up to that task?
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7 people found this helpful
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- Jane
- 06-21-21
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.
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3 people found this helpful
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- thom coco edwards
- 06-20-21
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.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Brent B
- 08-27-21
Please read this book!!!!!!!!!!!
Occasionally, a book comes along that lays bare our greatest vulnerabilities, our subdued prejudice, and our propensity for denial and self confirmation. This is that book. It does not spare anyone of the blame for our current situation and speaks truth to bull$#!+ in a straightforward and efficient manner that I have not seen in a long time. I feel convicted and inpsired and I am grateful for the authors courage in saying the things that need to be said. This book is a truth bomb and it deserves to be read and fully considered. May God bless George Packer for writing this outstanidng work.
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- Byron
- 09-01-22
Prejudiced, ignorant, unhelpful
Packer is an angry hack who spends half this poorly-written book on Trump. Bad writing usually comes from bad thinking, and Packer admits his mind suffered during Covid. His categories of Americans are cheap stereotypes. The only thing he gets right is the obvious: education matters, but he does not hold the Ivy League accountable for its dangerous Woke politics or refusal to admit more Southern students. Nor does he address the lack of trade schools needed to supplant the pervasive fallacy that a 4-year+ college education is necessary for economic success. Painfully myopic, Packer knows neither America nor other countries, so please don’t give this benighted, parochial, Covid-and Trump-deranged bigot your time. I’m sorry I wasted mine on his words.
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- Tom
- 06-30-23
A Sad Diagnosis along with a Hard & Simple Cure!
This is a very important Book which should be disseminated and discussed far more widely than it has been to date.
Packer has accurately limned the Fault Lines along which We Americans have created our Tribes. He traces the roots of our divisions far back beyond the Pandemic while assigning it a good amount of blame, but he acknowledges how deeply they run.
Unfortunately, after painting the Ugly Portrait of 2021 America, the only chemical solution he prescribes is the Cod Liver Oil that is probably too unbearable to stomach:
Turn off Twitter, Join a Bowling League, Meet Real Human Beings and Realize what a Fantastic Gift Life in American Democracy is and Work every Day to elect Leaders who will make it work!
He’s right of course and his recommended Policy Changes are spot on, but are we willing to do the hard work needed?
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- Ana M Castillo
- 06-12-23
A smart political read for our times.
A good read to help make sense out of these recent years. Well-written and yes, filled with hope. We need all we can get.
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- Tom Perkowski
- 01-15-23
Great read!
Packer has written a well researched, positive review of todays America. He makes a strong argument that we are the world’s best hope.
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In search of an explanation for the crisis that reached an unsettling crescendo in 2020 - a year of pandemic, civil unrest, and political turmoil - National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Evan Osnos returned to three places he knew firsthand: Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois. Reported over the course of six years, Wildland follows ordinary individuals as they navigate the varied landscapes of 21st-century America. Through their powerful, often poignant stories, Osnos traces the sources of America’s political dissolution.
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More of a painting than analysis
- By Eric Taylor on 09-27-21
By: Evan Osnos
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Our Man
- Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 20 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage.
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Story telling at its finest...
- By Chris Garrett on 11-10-19
By: George Packer
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Blood of the Liberals
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: George Packer
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, this is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.
By: George Packer
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Why Liberalism Failed
- By: Patrick J. Deneen
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Of the three dominant ideologies of the 20th century - fascism, communism, and liberalism - only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism's proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions.
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a fine idea stuffed in a dead horse and beat
- By David on 09-26-18
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There Is Nothing For You Here
- Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Fiona Hill
- Narrated by: Fiona Hill
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
A celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia—and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as an historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.
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Excellent book on populism, Putin, Trump and us
- By Erin on 10-08-21
By: Fiona Hill
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The Unwinding
- An Inner History of the New America
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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 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.
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Can't understand the low ratings!
- By Janet Pittman Henley on 05-27-13
By: George Packer
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Wildland
- The Making of America's Fury
- By: Evan Osnos
- Narrated by: Evan Osnos
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In search of an explanation for the crisis that reached an unsettling crescendo in 2020 - a year of pandemic, civil unrest, and political turmoil - National Book Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Evan Osnos returned to three places he knew firsthand: Greenwich, Connecticut; Clarksburg, West Virginia; and Chicago, Illinois. Reported over the course of six years, Wildland follows ordinary individuals as they navigate the varied landscapes of 21st-century America. Through their powerful, often poignant stories, Osnos traces the sources of America’s political dissolution.
-
-
More of a painting than analysis
- By Eric Taylor on 09-27-21
By: Evan Osnos
-
Our Man
- Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 20 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage.
-
-
Story telling at its finest...
- By Chris Garrett on 11-10-19
By: George Packer
-
Blood of the Liberals
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: George Packer
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, this is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.
By: George Packer
-
Why Liberalism Failed
- By: Patrick J. Deneen
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Of the three dominant ideologies of the 20th century - fascism, communism, and liberalism - only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism's proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions.
-
-
a fine idea stuffed in a dead horse and beat
- By David on 09-26-18
-
There Is Nothing For You Here
- Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Fiona Hill
- Narrated by: Fiona Hill
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A celebrated foreign policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia—and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, as well as her unique perspectives as an historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.
-
-
Excellent book on populism, Putin, Trump and us
- By Erin on 10-08-21
By: Fiona Hill
Related to this topic
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The Age of Entitlement
- America Since the Sixties
- By: Christopher Caldwell
- Narrated by: Christopher Caldwell
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A major American intellectual makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, instead left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled - and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences. Even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high - in wealth, freedom, and social stability - and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations.
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Do laudable ends justify unconstitutional means?
- By LBJ on 02-08-20
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Death of the Liberal Class
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Chris Hedges examines the failure of the liberal class to confront the rise of the corporate state and the consequences of a liberalism that has become profoundly bankrupted. Hedges argues that there are five pillars of the liberal establishment and that each of these institutions has sold out the constituents it represented. In doing so, the liberal class has become irrelevant to society at large and ultimately the corporate power elite they once served.
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Integrity-Can You Tell Me Where It's Gone?
- By Mel on 06-14-12
By: Chris Hedges
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What Were We Thinking
- A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era
- By: Carlos Lozada
- Narrated by: Christian Barillas
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is an irony of our age that a man who rarely reads has unleashed an onslaught of books about his tenure and his time. Dissections of the white working class. Manifestos of political resistance. Works on identity, gender, and migration. Memoirs on race and protest. Revelations of White House mayhem. Warnings over the future of conservatism, progressivism, and of American democracy itself.
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Useful book
- By Kindle Customer on 11-22-20
By: Carlos Lozada
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The Stakes
- America at the Point of No Return
- By: Michael Anton
- Narrated by: Dan Crue
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Two months before the 2016 presidential election, an anonymously published essay titled "The Flight 93 Election" rallied conservatives to charge the cockpit by voting for Trump. Michael Anton, the author of that controversial viral essay, now says that the last few years have only served to prove his Flight 93 thesis: The left has become more aggressive, more vindictive, and more dangerous - and the stakes have never been higher.
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America, this is your future
- By Sarah Carnello on 09-28-20
By: Michael Anton
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The Smallest Minority
- Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics
- By: Kevin D. Williamson
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Listener beware: Kevin D. Williamson - the lively, literary firebrand from National Review who was too hot for The Atlantic to handle - comes to bury democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower