George Packer Audio & Video

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes New Yorker staff writer George Packer for a discussion of the US political landscape. Packer recounts the insights he derived in researching and writing The Unwinding, his 2013 book about the US in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse.

An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history.

In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem.

Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites.

Betrayed is the story of three young Iraqi translators who risk everything for America's promise of freedom while their country collapses around them.

Rich in history and political insight, this is an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue over the Iraq War....

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, 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....