The Unwinding

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The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
ISBN
978-0374102418

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America is a 2013 non-fiction book by the American journalist George Packer. The book uses biographies of individual Americans as a means of discussing important forces in American history from 1978 to 2012, including the subprime mortgage crisis, the decline of American manufacturing, and the influence of money on politics. The Unwinding includes lengthy profiles of five subjects: a Youngstown, Ohio factory worker turned community organizer, a biodiesel entrepreneur from North Carolina, a Washington lobbyist and Congressional staffer, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel, and people involved in the distressed housing market in Tampa, Florida. Interspersed with these longer accounts are ten briefer biographical sketches of famous Americans such as the rapper Jay-Z, the politician Newt Gingrich, and the restaurateur and food activist Alice Waters.

In an interview with PBS NewsHour, Packer defined the book's theme as the unraveling of

"a contract that said if you work hard, if you essentially are a good citizen, there will be a place for you, not only an economic place, you will have a secure life, your kids will have a chance to have a better life, but you will sort of be recognized as part of the national fabric."[1]

The Unwinding follows the decline of a number of American institutions that Packer believes underpinned this contract, including locally owned businesses, unions, and public schools. According to Packer, the "void" left by the decline of these institutions "was filled by the default force in American life, organized money."[2]

The book's format and style were inspired by

U.S.A. trilogy, a series of novels published in the 1930s. Like The Unwinding, the U.S.A. trilogy combined longer narrative accounts of its main characters with short biographies of influential figures of the time period and collections of newspaper headlines and song lyrics.[3][4]

The Unwinding won the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction[5] and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award.[6]

Contents

Jeff Connaughton

Jeff Connaughton began a decades-long affiliation with Senator

lobbyist for the firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates, representing clients such as Laurent Gbagbo
, the President of the Ivory Coast. Connaughton held frequent fundraisers for politicians in order to gain access to their offices.

When Biden became Vice President and Ted Kaufman, Biden's former Chief of Staff was appointed to fill Biden's Senate seat, Connaughton went to work for Kaufman. Together, Kaufman and Connaughton worked on reform of the financial services industry in the wake of the Great Recession. They encouraged criminal prosecution of financial fraud cases as well as limits to the size of banks, but met with limited success. Connaughton found that the lobbyists he used to work with had better information and more input on financial reform regulation than he had as a Senate aide. Connaughton believed that advocates for U.S. financial system reform, such as the group Americans for Financial Reform, were being overwhelmed by industry lobbyists. After Kaufman's term ended, Connaughton, disillusioned with Obama/Biden and Washington, moved to Savannah, Georgia and published a memoir of his experiences, The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins.

A version of this section of The Unwinding was published in The New Yorker, where Packer is a staff writer.[7]

Dean Price

Dean Price came from a family of tobacco farmers in the

Obama Administration
. However, Price's restaurants and gas stations failed amidst the Great Recession and Price lost control of the biodiesel company. After these failures, Price began a new venture: using used cooking oil from restaurants to provide fuel for local school buses.

Tammy Thomas

Tammy Thomas is an African American woman from

community organizer
in Youngstown, recruiting local residents to advocate for neighborhood improvement and mapping the city's many abandoned properties.

Shorter biographical sketches

In addition to the longer portraits of ordinary Americans, The Unwinding also includes shorter biographical sketches of the following influential figures:

Reception

Writing in

David Brooks praised the book's narratives as "beautifully reported" and "vivid snapshots of people who have experienced a loss of faith", but criticized Packer's lack of analysis. According to Brooks, the book's "lack of a foundational theory of history undermines the explanatory power of The Unwinding".[9]

References

  1. ^ "Tracking the breakdown of American social institutions in 'The Unwinding'". PBS NewsHour. 26 December 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2014.
  2. ^ Packer 2013, p. 3.
  3. ^ Fehrman, Craig (20 May 2013). "The Unwinding". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 11 January 2014.
  4. ^ Lehmann, Chris (10 September 2013). "Great Perturbations: On George Packer". The Nation. Retrieved 11 January 2014.
  5. ^ "2013 National Book Award Winner, Nonfiction". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 11 January 2014.
  6. ^ Italie, Hillel (12 January 2014). "National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists For 2013 Announced". The Huffington Post. AP. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  7. ^ Packer, George (29 October 2012). "Washington Man". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 January 2014.
  8. ^ Packer 2013, p. 52.
  9. ^ Brooks, David (6 June 2013). "The Big Money 'The Unwinding,' by George Packer". The New York Times. Retrieved 16 January 2014.

Bibliography

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