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: through the lives of several Americans, including a son of tobacco farmers who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural South; a factory worker in the Rust Belt trying to survive the collapse of her city; a Washington insider oscillating between political idealism and the lure of organized money; and 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, to portray a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams. Packer discusses his work with fellowNew Yorker writer Dexter Filkins, author of the acclaimed account of Iraq and Afghanistan The Forever War.

External Link »