American democracy is beset by a sense of crisis. Seismic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, allowing unprecedented freedom while rending the social contract, driving the political system to the verge of breakdown, and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward. In The Unwinding, George Packer journeys through the lives of several everyday Americans over the past three decades. From every corner of the country, their intimate stories are interwoven 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.
The Unwindingportrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams; its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, and its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation. Please join us for a discussion with author George Packer on his new book.
Copies of The Unwinding will be available for purchase at the event.
Featured author:
George Packer, author, The Unwinding; contributor, The New Yorker
Moderated by:
Tom Perriello, President and CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund; Counselor for Policy, Center for American Progress