Last Best Hope

A short, sharp nonfiction modern classic on the political and societal state of America – how America got into this mess, and how it might get out of it – by one of the world's greatest nonfiction writers.

Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America's descent into a failed state and envisions a path toward overcoming 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, leading the world in COVID cases and deaths, and recently led by an incompetent authoritarian bigot? Last Best Hope is a bracing account of our current crisis and how a new era of civic revitalisation 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: Imagines a nation of individuals responsible for their own fate, serving the interests of corporations and the wealthy.
• Cosmopolitan America: The ideology of Silicon Valley and the professional elite, which celebrates globalisation but leaves many American communities behind.
• Diverse America: Defines citizens as members of large identity groups that have inflicted or suffered oppression.
• White America: A shallow nationalism that fears the contamination of non-whites and the treachery of coastal elites, posing 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 that the times demand.