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? Acclaimed author George Packer joins us to discuss his latest book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal.

Packer offers us a riveting, clear-sighted analysis of how America got here and presents four incompatible narratives that currently dominate American public life: the Free America of libertarian Reagan, the Smart America of Silicon Valley and the professional elite, the Real America of white Christian nationalism, and the Just America of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. None of these narratives, according to Packer, can sustain American democracy. Rather than despair, Packer draws on previous eras of crisis and presents a hopeful vision for how a new era of civic revitalization may bring it to an end.

By creating a fifth version of the U.S.: the Equal America – which involves extending the New Deal to Americans in more areas of their lives, from affordable and universal health care to a living minimum wage and beyond – Americans can reinvigorate their self-government. “No one is going to save us. We are our last best hope.”

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ABOUT GEORGE PACKER
George Packer is the author of "The Unwinding; Thirty Years of American Decline", which won the National Book Award. His other non-fiction books include "The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq"; "Blood of the Liberals", which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award; and "Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century", which won the Hitchens Prize and the Los Angeles Times Prize for biography and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. From 2003 to 2018 he was a staff writer for The New Yorker. He is currently a staff writer for The Atlantic.

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ABOUT THE BOOK
"Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal" (2021/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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Released by Rowohlt Buchverlag in Germany as "Die letzte beste Hoffnung: Zum Zustand der Vereinigten Staaten"
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ORGANIZERS:
A part of the Munich Dialogues on Democracy Speakers Series, a cooperation between The Yale Club of Germany e.V. (Munich Chapter) and Amerikahaus - Bavarian Center for Transatlantic Relations.

This discussion is supported by the Foreign Federal Office ([ Ссылка ]).

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