{"title":"George Packer","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the insightful and thought-provoking works of George Packer. From incisive non-fiction to compelling explorations of American society, discover journalism and essays that matter. Start your reading journey here.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"unwinding-book-george-packer-9781529111583","title":"The Unwinding","description":"*WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION*  ‘A Great American Novel in the guise of a Great Nonfiction Epic, The Unwinding asks…do we truly like the world we have made for ourselves?’  The Times  America is in crisis.   In the space of a generation the country has become divided between winners and losers, with its political system on the verge of breakdown and its people adrift amongst failing institutions.  In The Unwinding, George Packer tells the human story of America’s vertiginous collapse. Dean Price is a sustainability evangelist in the rural South; Tammy Thomas, a factory worker trying to survive the collapse of the Rust Belt; Jeff Connaughton, a political careerist in Washington, and Peter Thiel, a controversial Silicon Valley billionaire. Journeying across three decades, Packer weaves the stories of these four Americans together to paint a rich, complex and compelling portrait of contemporary America as it stands at this, its most pivotal moment.   ‘Hums - with sorrow, with outrage and with compassion... Close to a non-fiction masterpiece’ The New York Times","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49509880529169,"sku":"GOR010376620","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733767725329,"sku":"NGR9781529111583","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50767748989201,"sku":"GOR011925326","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51720935407889,"sku":"GOR010734164","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51884583944465,"sku":"GOR011453295","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1529111587.jpg?v=1750861297"},{"product_id":"unwinding-book-george-packer-9780571251285","title":"The Unwinding","description":"America is in crisis. In the space of a generation, it has become more than ever a country of winners and losers, as industries have failed, institutions have disappeared and the country's focus has shifted to idolise celebrity and wealth. George Packer narrates the story of America over the past three decades, bringing to the task his empathy with people facing difficult challenges, his sharp eye for detail and a gift for weaving together engaging narratives. The \"Unwinding\" moves deftly back and forth through the lives of its people, 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 industrial Midwest attempting to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton, a political careerist in Washington; and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire. Their stories are interspersed with biographical sketches of the era's leading public figures, from Oprah Winfrey to Steve Jobs, to create a rich, wise and very human portrait of the USA in these hard times. The \"Unwinding\" portrays a superpower coming apart at the seams, its elites and institutions no longer working, leaving ordinary people to improvise their own schemes for salvation. George Packer is also the author of \"The Assassin's Gate\", which was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the \"New York Times\" and won the Helen Bernstein Book Award. \"A tour de force ...A fascinating journey through an America that has largely remained hidden from view. There are echoes of Don DeLillo's Underworld in the scope of Packer's vision and his deft eye for language and detail.\" (Sunday Business Post).","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49520518889745,"sku":"GOR005009484","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571251285.jpg?v=1751426286"},{"product_id":"assassins-gate-book-george-packer-9780571230440","title":"The Assassins' Gate","description":"The Assassins' Gate recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. The consequences of that policy are shown in the author's vivid reporting on the ground in Iraq, where he made several tours on assignment for The New Yorker. We see up close the struggles of individual American soldiers and civilians and Iraqis from all backgrounds. Here is the full range of ideas and emotions stirred up by America's most controversial foreign-policy venture since Vietnam.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49522128519441,"sku":"GOR001165305","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730043609361,"sku":"NGR9780571230440","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52987547812113,"sku":"GOR001442668","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/057123044X.jpg?v=1759228324"},{"product_id":"assassins-gate-book-george-packer-9780374299637","title":"The Assassins' Gate","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNamed One of the 10 Best Books of the Year by \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNamed one of the Best Books of the Year by \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eNew York \u003c\/i\u003emagazine.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Nonfiction Book on International Affairs\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq \u003c\/i\u003erecounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's war policy and led America to the Assassins' Gate--the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Assassins' Gate \u003c\/i\u003ealso describes the place of the war in American life: the ideological battles in Washington that led to chaos in Iraq, the ordeal of a fallen soldier's family, and the political culture of a country too bitterly polarized to realize such a vast and morally complex undertaking. George Packer's best-selling first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America's most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49524120715537,"sku":"GOR002640615","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49875976454417,"sku":"CIN0374299633G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50350900609297,"sku":"CIN0374299633A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50509773668625,"sku":"GOR006194876","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50784192987409,"sku":"CIN0374299633VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52994792620305,"sku":"GOR013228720","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374299633.jpg?v=1751196906"},{"product_id":"unwinding-book-george-packer-9780571251292","title":"The Unwinding","description":"America is in crisis. In the space of a generation, it has become more than ever a country of winners and losers, as industries have failed, institutions have disappeared and the country's focus has shifted to idolise celebrity and wealth.    George Packer narrates the story of America over the past three decades, bringing to the task his empathy with people facing difficult challenges, his sharp eye for detail and a gift for weaving together engaging narratives.  The Unwinding moves deftly back and forth through the lives of its people, 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 industrial Midwest attempting to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton, a political careerist in Washington; and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire. Their stories are interspersed with biographical sketches of the era's leading public figures, from Oprah Winfrey to Steve Jobs, to create a rich, wise and very human portrait of the USA in these hard times.   The Unwinding portrays a superpower coming apart at the seams, its elites and institutions no longer working, leaving ordinary people to improvise their own schemes for salvation.   George Packer is also the author of The Assassin's Gate, which was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the New York Times and won the Helen Bernstein Book Award.   'A tour de force . . . A fascinating journey through an America that has largely remained hidden from view. There are echoes of Don DeLillo's Underworld in the scope of Packer's vision and his deft eye for language and detail.' Sunday Business Post","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49543523107089,"sku":"GOR005686068","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50353833148689,"sku":"CIN0571251293G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50357483929873,"sku":"CIN0571251293A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50357488025873,"sku":"CIN0571251293VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50703577186577,"sku":"NGR9780571251292","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51127274635537,"sku":"GOR008342058","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51391685984529,"sku":"GOR005908005","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571251293.jpg?v=1771502421"},{"product_id":"our-man-book-george-packer-9781910702925","title":"Our Man","description":"From one of America’s greatest non-fiction writers, an epic saga of the rise and fall of American power, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, told through the life of one man.  **WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2019** **FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2020**  Richard Holbrooke was one of the most legendary and complicated figures in recent American history. Brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites, he was both admired and detested. 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. 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. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted.   Holbrooke’s story is the story of the rise and fall of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. Drawing on Holbrooke’s diaries and papers, George Packer’s narrative is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man, and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.                                                                                                                                                                                      ‘Rarely in recent years has a work of non-fiction so clearly, ruthlessly, compassionately shown such a prominent person’s life from the inside out. It is a masterwork about diplomacy, government and the world’ Anand Giridharadas, Guardian","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49547376853265,"sku":"GOR009725922","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52116222705937,"sku":"GOR010322513","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1910702927.jpg?v=1751061752"},{"product_id":"last-best-hope-book-george-packer-9781787333420","title":"Last Best Hope","description":"What happened to America? Is there still hope?  We have arrived at a critical moment in American history. The United States is divided, its democracy is shaken. But all is not lost.  The remarkable fruit of two decades of research, Last Best Hope is a riveting, urgent, clear-sighted analysis of how America got here, and how it can move forward. It presents a hopeful vision for a radical reform of American life - one that enables meaningful change, via policy, legislation, executive action, civic activism, scholarship and the media. Drawing on the best of American history - what once made it great - without being trapped in the past, Last Best Hope dares America to step into a new and better era.   The thrilling new work from one of America's most incisive thinkers, Last Best Hope is a modern classic of political and societal commentary.  'One of the most talented non-fiction writers in the US.' FINANCIAL TIMES *BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2019*  'Arguably the most renowned American journalist of his generation.' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49547571298577,"sku":"GOR011820219","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49738861609233,"sku":"NGR9781787333420","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49756320760081,"sku":"GOR011815901","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1787333426.jpg?v=1751436401"},{"product_id":"interesting-times-book-george-packer-9780374175726","title":"Interesting Times","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe 2013 National Book Award Winner\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Bestseller\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThroughout his career as a journalist, George Packer has always been attuned to the voices and stories of individuals caught up in the big ideas and events of contemporary history. \u003ci\u003eInteresting Times \u003c\/i\u003eunites brilliant investigative pieces such as Betrayed, about Iraqi interpreters, with personal essays and detailed narratives of travels through war zones and failed states. Spanning a decade that includes the September 11, 2001 attacks and the election of Barack Obama, Packer brings insight and passion to his accounts of the war on terror, Iraq, political writers, and the 2008 election. Across these varied subjects a few key themes recur: the temptations and dangers of idealism; the moral complexities of war and politics; the American capacity for self-blinding and self-renewal. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhether exploring American policies in the wake of September 11, tracking a used T-shirt from New York to Uganda, or describing the ambivalent response in Appalachia to Obama, these essays hold a mirror up to our own troubled times and showcase Packer's unmistakable perspective, which is at once both wide-angled and humane.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49564825190673,"sku":"GOR011095322","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49790845092113,"sku":"CIN0374175721G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50348062114065,"sku":"CIN0374175721A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50683106590993,"sku":"GOR009042947","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374175721.jpg?v=1751427410"},{"product_id":"our-man-book-george-packer-9780307958020","title":"Our Man","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography*\u003cbr\u003e*Winner of the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles \u003c\/i\u003eTimes Prize for Biography*\u003cbr\u003e*Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize*\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePortrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it.--Walter Isaacson, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBy the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like  Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -- sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself.--David M. Shribman, \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRichard 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. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. In \u003ci\u003eOur Man, \u003c\/i\u003e drawn from Holbrooke's diaries and papers, we are given a nonfiction narrative that is both intimate and epic in its revelatory portrait of this extraordinary and deeply flawed man and the elite spheres of society and government he inhabited.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49569214169361,"sku":"CIN0307958027G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49685605712145,"sku":"CIN0307958027VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50286582464785,"sku":"GOR013913080","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50348525519121,"sku":"CIN0307958027A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51154124439825,"sku":"GOR014188670","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0307958027.jpg?v=1750844295"},{"product_id":"village-of-waiting-book-george-packer-9780374527808","title":"The Village of Waiting","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBack in print, the \"masterful\" (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e) account of an American in West Africa\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Now restored to print with a new Foreword by Philip Gourevitch and an Afterword by the author, \u003ci\u003eThe Village of Waiting\u003c\/i\u003e is a frank, moving, and vivid account of contemporary life in West Africa. Stationed as a Peace Corps instructor in the village of Lavié (the name means \"wait a little more\") in tiny and underdeveloped Togo, George Packer reveals his own schooling at the hands of an unforgettable array of townspeople--peasants, chiefs, charlatans, children, market women, cripples, crazies, and those who, having lost or given up much of their traditional identity and fastened their hopes on \"development,\" find themselves trapped between the familiar repetitions of rural life and the chafing monotony of waiting for change.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49570573910289,"sku":"GOR007930757","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50351643525393,"sku":"CIN0374527806A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50351644770577,"sku":"CIN0374527806G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51001791840529,"sku":"NIN9780374527808","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52625691476241,"sku":"CIN0374527806VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374527806.jpg?v=1751455826"},{"product_id":"last-best-hope-book-george-packer-9781250849304","title":"Last Best Hope","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e's 100 notable books of 2021\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"[George Packer's] account of America's decline into destructive tribalism is always illuminating and often dazzling.\" --William Galston, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 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\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eLast Best Hope\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 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. 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Brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites, he was both admired and detested. 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. 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. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted.   Holbrooke’s story is the story of the rise and fall of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. 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George Packer's best-selling first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America's most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.es the place of the war in American life: the ideological battles in Washington that led to chaos in Iraq, the ordeal of a fallen soldier's family, and the political culture of a country too bitterly polarized to realize such a vast and morally complex undertaking. George Packer's best-selling first-person narrative combines the scope of an epic history with the depth and intimacy of a novel, creating a masterful account of America's most controversial foreign venture since Vietnam.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49590194602257,"sku":"GOR013507133","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50324911882513,"sku":"CIN0374530556A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50351038333201,"sku":"CIN0374530556G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50941865623825,"sku":"CIN0374530556VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51001803309329,"sku":"NIN9780374530556","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374530556.jpg?v=1750845632"},{"product_id":"our-man-book-george-packer-9781984883278","title":"Our Man","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography*\u003cbr\u003e*Winner of the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles \u003c\/i\u003eTimes Prize for Biography*\u003cbr\u003e*Winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize*\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePortrays Holbrooke in all of his endearing and exasperating self-willed glory...Both a sweeping diplomatic history and a Shakespearean tragicomedy... If you could read one book to comprehend American's foreign policy and its quixotic forays into quicksands over the past 50 years, this would be it.--Walter Isaacson, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBy the end of the second page, maybe the third, you will be hooked...There never was a diplomat-activist quite like  Holbrooke], and there seldom has been a book quite like this -- sweeping and sentimental, beguiling and brutal, catty and critical, much like the man himself.--David M. Shribman, \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRichard 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. 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It tells the story of the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's war policy and led America to the Assassin's Gate - the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The consequences of that policy are shown in the author's vivid reporting on the ground in Iraq, where he made several tours on assignment for \"The New Yorker\". 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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. 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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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Unwinding\u003c\/i\u003e 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.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.d gift for weaving together complex narratives.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Unwinding\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Unwinding\u003c\/i\u003e 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.d gift for weaving together complex narratives.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Unwinding\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Unwinding\u003c\/i\u003e 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.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.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.d gift for weaving together complex narratives.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Unwinding\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Unwinding\u003c\/i\u003e 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.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.\u003ci\u003eThe Unwinding\u003c\/i\u003e 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.left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation. 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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. But his sharp elbows and tireless self-promotion ensured that he never rose to the highest levels in government that he so desperately coveted. His story is thus the story of America during its era of supremacy: its strength, drive, and sense of possibility, as well as its penchant for overreach and heedless self-confidence. 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Spanning a decade that includes the September 11, 2001 attacks and the election of Barack Obama, Packer brings insight and passion to his accounts of the war on terror, Iraq, political writers, and the 2008 election. 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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. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eLast Best Hope\u003c\/i\u003e, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. 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Providing a unique view of American life during the Great Depression and Second World War, each 'Fields of Vision' volume includes an introduction to the life of the photographer by a leading author or journalist, and 50 evocative images selected from their work. Transporting the viewer to American homes, farms and streets in the 1930s and 1940s, they also offer a glimpse of a new narrative and intimate style that was later to blossom on the pages of LOOK and LIFE magazines. For many Americans of the pre-television age, the diversity and complexity of their country was defined by the lenses of these men and women. Arthur Rothstein was born in New York in 1915. In the early 1930s he attended Columbia University, where he studied with Roy Stryker, who later hired him at the FSA. 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