Waubonsee Community College

The unwinding, an inner history of the new America, George Packer

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 431-434)

contains biographical information

no index present

non fiction

The unwinding

bibliography

812252804

George Packer

an inner history of the new America

American democracy is beset by a sense of crisis. Seismic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, allowing unprecedented freedom while rending the social contract, driving the political system to the verge of breakdown, and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward. In this book the author tells the story of the United States over the past three decades. The book journeys through the lives of several Americans, 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 Rust Belt trying to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton, a Washington insider oscillating between political idealism and the lure of organized money; and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who questions the Internet's significance and arrives at a radical vision of the future. The author interweaves these intimate stories with biographical sketches of the era's leading public figures, from Newt Gingrich to Jay-Z, and collages made from newspaper headlines, advertising slogans, and song lyrics that capture the flow of events and their undercurrents. Through an examination of the lives of these Americans and leading public figures over the past three decades, the book portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation

1978 -- Dean Price -- Total war: Newt Gingrich -- Jeff Connaughton -- 1984 -- Tammy Thomas -- Her own: Oprah Winfrey -- Jeff Connaughton -- 1987 -- Craftsman: Raymond Carver -- Dean Price -- Tammy Thomas -- Mr. Sam: Sam Walton -- 1994 -- Jeff Connaughton -- Silicon Valley -- 1999 -- Dean Price -- Tammy Thomas -- 2003 -- Institution man (1): Colin Powell -- Jeff Connaughton -- Dean Price -- Radish Queen: Alice Waters -- Tampa -- Silicon Valley -- 2008 -- Institution man (2): Robert Rubin -- Jeff Connaughton -- Tammy Thomas -- Dean Price -- Just business: Jay-Z -- Tampa -- Jeff Connaughton -- 2010 -- Citizen journalist: Andrew Breitbart -- Tampa -- Dean Price -- Tammy Thomas -- Tampa -- Prairie populist: Elizabeth Warren -- Wall Street -- 2012 -- Silicon Valley -- Jeff Connaughton -- Tampa -- Tammy Thomas -- Dean Price