The Unwinding
Thirty Years of American Decline
- Published: 2 May 2019
- ISBN: 9781473569904
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 448
Packer's is an American voice of exceptional clarity and humanity in a tradition of reportage that renders the quotidian extraordinary. When our descendants survey the ruins of this modern imperium and sift its cultural detritus, American voices like this will be the tiny treasures that endure.
David Goldbatt, Independent
The historic scope of Packer's book - from the late-Seventies economic downturn right up to the recent Occupy Wall Street protests - is as impressive as its immense ambition and its cumulative narrative power... A Great American Novel in the guise of a Great Nonfiction Epic, The Unwinding asks us...that daunting, unsettling question: do we truly like the world we have made for ourselves?
The Times
Epic, sad and unsettling history of the last four decades in the US... It is a testament to Packer's talents that The Unwinding is powerful, rather than off-puttingly earnest or just depressing, and that it lingers so long after reading. The sense of loneliness - of isolated souls, failed by their institutions, pummelled by the forces of big money - seems to seep under your skin, and to stay there.
Oliver Burkeman, Guardian
Packer is among the best non-fiction writers in America... In its sensibility, The Unwinding is closer to a novel than a work of fiction. It is all the more powerful for it.
Edward Luce, Financial Times
Original, incisive, courageous, and essential. One of the best works of non-fiction I've read in years
Katherine Boo, author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers
A tour de force... A fascinating journey through an America that has largely remained hidden from view. There are echoes of Don DeLillo's Underworld in the scope of Packer's vision and his deft eye for language and detail
Sunday Business Post
Hums - with sorrow, with outrage and with compassion for those who are caught in the gears of America's increasingly complicated (and increasingly poorly calibrated) financial machinery... Close to a non-fiction masterpiece
The New York Times
A precise, complex but delicately wrought tapestry, both funny and wistfully sad and always rich in observational detail... [An] angry, wise and moving state-of-the-union address
Sunday Telegraph