George Packer
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Now restored to print with a new Foreword by Philip Gourevitch and an Afterword by the author, The Village of Waiting is a frank, moving, and vivid account of contemporary life in West Africa. Stationed as a Peace Corps instructor in the village of Lavié (the name means "wait a little more") in tiny and underdeveloped Togo, George Packer reveals his own schooling at the hands of an unforgettable array of townspeople—peasants, chiefs,...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
This book recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It brings to life the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's war policy and led America to the Assassins' Gate--the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The consequences of that policy are shown in the author's reporting on the ground in Iraq for The New Yorker. We see up close...
Author
Language
English
Description
Based on George Packer's account in The New Yorker, Betrayed is a riveting and morally complex drama that explores in the Iraqis' own words the ways in which we have already abandoned them.
Millions of Iraqis, spanning the country's religious and ethnic spectrum, welcomed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But the mostly young men and women who embraced America's project so enthusiastically that they were prepared to risk their lives for it by aiding...
Author
Language
English
Description
An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history
George Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the century-an agrarian liberal in the Jacksonian mold who opposed the New Deal. Packer's father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and dean at Stanford whose convictions...
Author
Language
English
Description
Throughout his career as a journalist, George Packer has always been attuned to the voices and stories of individuals caught up in the big ideas and events of contemporary history. Interesting Times unites brilliant investigative pieces such as "Betrayed," about Iraqi interpreters, with personal essays and detailed narratives of travels through war zones and failed states. Spanning a decade that includes the September 11, 2001 attacks and the election...
6) Betrayed
Author
Language
English
Description
Millions of young Iraqis aided the United States overthrow Saddam Hussein's government. However, most of those who helped the foreign invaders are now falling prey to insurgents and those who detest the American occupation. Here, George Packer reveals the harrowing stories of how Iraq's true liberators are being ignored by U.S. officials.
Author
Physical Desc
viii, 434 pages ; 24 cm
Language
English
Description
Through an examination of the lives of several Americans and leading public figures over the past three decades, Packer 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.
Author
Physical Desc
592 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm
Language
English
Description
"From the award-winning author of The Unwinding -- the vividly told saga of the ambition, idealism, and hubris of one of the most legendary and complicated figures in recent American history, set amid the rise and fall of U.S. power from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, wholly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the...
Author
Physical Desc
226 pages ; 22 cm
Language
English
Description
2020: 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. Packer explores 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...
Author
Physical Desc
xxviii, 308 pages ; 21 cm
Language
English
Description
Honoring the author's mastery of the essay form, brings together such classic works as "Shooting an Elephant" with passages from his wartime diary and lesser-known journalistic pieces that weave together the personal and political in studies of his boyhood in an English boarding school and his experiences during the Spanish Civil War.