‘Meet the Journalist: George Packer’

In Last Best Hope, the renowned US journalist George Packer (National Book Award 2013) explores the four narratives that currently dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals serving the interests of corporations; 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 that Americans of different persuasions have held for centuries. George Packer diagnoses America's descent into a failed state, and envisages a way forward to overcome the injustices, paralysis and divisions.

Moderation: Andrew Keen