Just over a decade into the new millennium, America is beset by a sense of
crisis. The seismic shifts that occurred in the space of a generation have
created a country of winners and losers, leaving the social contract in
pieces. In The Unwinding, George Packer narrates the story of America over
the past three decades, bringing to the task his empathy with people facing
difficult challenges, his sharp eye for detail and a gift for weaving
together engaging narratives...The Unwinding moves deftly back and forth
through the lives of half a dozen characters, including Dean Price, the son
of tobacco farmers who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural
South; Tammy Thomas, a factory worker in the industrial Midwest trying to
survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton, a Washington careerist;
and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire. The narrative alternates
these intimately told stories with biographical sketches of the era's
leading public figures, from Oprah Winfrey to Steve Jobs, capturing the
year-by-year flow of events...The Unwinding portrays a superpower coming
apart at the seams, its elites and institutions no longer working, leaving
ordinary people to improvise their own schemes for salvation.