BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

    (By George Packer)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 22 MB (22,081 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 598 times
    Last checked 9 Hour ago!
    Author George Packer
    “Book Descriptions: Acclaimed National Book Award-winning author George Packer diagnoses America’s descent into a failed state, and envisions a path toward overcoming our injustices, paralyses, and divides
    In the year 2020, Americans suffered one rude blow after another to their health, livelihoods, and collective self-esteem. A ruthless pandemic, an inept and malign government response, polarizing protests, and an election marred by conspiracy theories left many citizens in despair about their country and its democratic experiment. With pitiless precision, the year exposed the nation’s underlying conditions—discredited elites, weakened institutions, blatant inequalities—and how difficult they are to remedy.
    In Last Best Hope, George Packer traces the shocks back to their sources. He explores the four narratives that now dominate American life: Free America, which imagines a nation of separate individuals and serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy; 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—the “hidden code”—that Americans of diverse persuasions have held for centuries. Today, we are challenged again to fight for equality and renew what Alexis de Tocqueville called “the art” of self-government. In its strong voice and trenchant analysis, Last Best Hope is an essential contribution to the literature of national renewal.”

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    Wildland: The Making of America's Fury

    ★★★★★

    Evan Osnos

    Book 1

    The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

    ★★★★★

    Jeff Sharlet

    Book 1

    The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

    ★★★★★

    Richard N. Haass

    Book 1

    The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

    ★★★★★

    Yascha Mounk

    Book 1

    American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress

    ★★★★★

    Wesley Lowery

    Book 1

    Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

    ★★★★★

    Heather Cox Richardson

    Book 1

    Poverty, by America

    ★★★★★

    Matthew Desmond

    Book 1

    Rejection

    ★★★★★

    Tony Tulathimutte

    Book 1

    How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them

    ★★★★★

    Barbara F. Walter

    Book 1

    Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future

    ★★★★★

    Oliver Franklin-Wallis

    Book 1

    Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point

    ★★★★★

    Steven Levitsky

    Book 1

    A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order

    ★★★★★

    Richard N. Haass

    Book 1

    Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell

    ★★★★★

    Tim Miller

    Book 1

    White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy

    ★★★★★

    Thomas F. Schaller

    Book 1

    The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (ALA Notable Books for Adults)

    ★★★★★

    Brendan I. Koerner

    Book 1

    Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age

    ★★★★★

    Amy Klobuchar

    Book 1

    Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016

    ★★★★★

    Steve Coll