Name: Daniel Bower's review of Last Best Hope by George Packer
Item: Last Best Hope
Rating: 4
Author: Daniel Bower

George Packer

An acclaimed National Book Award-winning author diagnoses America's descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides How, in a few decades, did the United States transform from a broadly prosperous middle-class country, with relatively healthy institutions and competent leaders, to a nation defined by discredited elites, hollowed-out institutions, and blatant inequalities--feared and pitied by our friends, mocked and sabotaged by our adversaries, first in the world in Covid cases and deaths, and led in recent years by an incompetent authoritarian bigot?Last Best Hope is a bracing account of our current crisis and of how a new era of civic revitalization may bring it to an end. Combining reportage with historical narrative, autobiography, and political analysis, Packer depicts and assesses the four inadequate narratives that dominate American public life: Libertarian America, which imagines a nation of individuals responsible for their own fate, and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; Cosmopolitan America, the ideology of Silicon Valley and the professional elite,which celebrates globalization and leaves many American communities behind ; DiverseAmerica, which defines citizens as members of large identity groups that have inflicted or suffered oppression; and White America, a shallow nationalism that fears the contamination of non-whites and treachery of coastal elites, and poses the greatest threat to democracy in our lifetime. 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. Combining trenchant social analysis with a vibrant and stinging essayistic voice and a deep knowledge of America's past and present,Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national self-examination the times demand.

An Essay on the Revival of America

Last Best Hope

Daniel Bower

Chris Aldrich

You will have heard much of the opening to this book before, that is, how America came to crisis it currently finds itself in. That said, I found Packer’s analysis of “Four Americas” to be razor sharp and made the book worth reading for that alone.

Chris Aldrich &
Last Best Hope by George Packer

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Chris Aldrich &Last Best Hope by George Packer

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Chris Aldrich &
Last Best Hope by George Packer