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 first in the world in Covid cases and deaths and led
in recent years by an incompetent authoritarian bigot? Last Best Hope is a bracing account of
our current crisis and of how a new era of civic revitalization 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 which imagines a nation of individuals responsible for their own fate and
serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy Cosmopolitan America the ideology of
Silicon Valley and the professional elite which celebrates globalization and leaves many
American communities behind Diverse America which defines citizens as members of large
identity groups that have inflicted or suffered oppression and White America a shallow
nationalism that fears the contamination of non-whites and treachery of coastal elites and
poses 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 the times demand.
