Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
Written by George Packer
Narrated by George Packer
4/5
()
About this audiobook
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
George Packer
George Packer is an award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic. His previous books include The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award), The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (winner of the Hitchens Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography). He is also the author of two novels and a play, and the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of George Orwell.
Related to Last Best Hope
Related audiobooks
Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of “The Big Lie” Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Trust: America's Best Chance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Reckoning: Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beautiful Things: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why We're Polarized Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for American Democracy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Democracy Rules Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the House: A Washington Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Out on a Limb: Selected Writing, 1989–2021 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Anti-Intellectualism in American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Liberalism and Its Discontents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Social Science For You
The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hunger Games Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Song of Achilles: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Left Hand of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lonely Dad Conversations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Radiolab: Mixtape: How The Cassette Changed The World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Cute When You're Mad: Simple Steps for Confronting Sexism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Last Best Hope
25 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Some books are polemic, offering an unabashedly biased opinion that you may agree or disagree with. The tragedy of this work is in the author's attempt to bring insight and solutions to serious problems without recognizing his own bias. By his own definition, the author is a member of 'smart America', but his inability to step outside of his own bubble hinders his ability to analyze his own segments weaknesses. This is an interesting book, but I can't recommend it. I believe his desire to help us pure, but the execution comes across as offensive and alienating to the majority of Americans as he accuses others of being. If he had followed his own advice and turned off his computer to have more real conversations with those who have differing opinions from himself, we would have all been better served by his efforts.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I would recommend The Upswing by Robert Putnam instead. Its is much more of a detailed and interesting thesis based in fact.