George Packer on Redefining "American" and the Inequalities of the State

In this episode of Just the Right Book with Roxanne Coady, George Packer joins Roxanne to discuss his new book, The Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, out now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. George Packer is a journalist, novelist, playwright, and staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest book is Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, which the members of the Whiting Award grant jury—from whom Packer was awarded a grant to complete the work—say is “irreverent, fast-paced, and unfailingly rigorous. . . an enthralling nonfiction picaresque that offers incisive clues to the complexities this country faces today.” Packer’s other works include the nonfiction titles The Unwinding, recipient of the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2013; The Assassins’ Gate, which was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the New York Times Book Review and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Blood of the Liberals, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He was a Guggenheim Fellow and has taught writing at Harvard, Bennington, and Columbia. Roxanne Coady is owner of R.J. Julia, one of the leading independent booksellers in the United States, which—since 1990—has been a community resource not only for books, but for the exchange of ideas. In 1998, Coady founded Read To Grow, which provides books for newborns and children and encourages parents to read to their children from birth. RTG has distributed over 1.5 million books.