George Packer
Verified
i like the simple things in life.....sudoku, new york times crossword...you know!!
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by George Packer
Sally Rooney Is Wrong, and So Is What’s Happening to Her
On October 14, the publisher Faber & Faber announced that it would stop selling books by the Irish novelist Sally Rooney in the United Kingdom. Rooney has declared her intention to donate her earnings to a group called Palestine Action, which was banned last year by the British government. Her publisher concluded that it could not continue to pay royalties that would end up in the hands of a registered terrorist organization.
Il prezzo della non strategia
Nell’autunno 2009, l’ormai annosa guerra in Afghanistan presentò a Barack Obama un serio dilemma. Il generale Stanley McChrystal chiedeva 40 mila soldati in più, che sommati al precedente incremento di 21 mila e alle altre unità dispiegate avrebbe portato a oltre 100 mila il totale delle truppe statunitensi nel paese. McChrystal era stato in Afghanistan da giugno.
The Great Data-Center Rebellion
Listen1.0x 0:0015:13 Clinton, Iowa, is topographically flat and economically declining. The sawmills that made the city rich in the late 19th century have been repurposed as a museum. One of the Victorian mansions long since abandoned by the old lumber barons is open for tours, but tourists are scarce. Clinton has shrunk to about 24,000 people, and the town center, along the Mississippi River, feels nearly empty.
Escaping the Story My Mother Had Written for Me
Listen1.0x 0:0057:33 1. When I was 13, not long after my father had committed suicide, I asked my mother, “What’s the Oedipus complex?” “Why?” she replied at once. “Are you afraid you’ve got it?” Explore the October 2026 Issue Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. View More Maybe.
Sons and Mothers
Culture 1 hour ago Column: The never-ending celebration of the life and words of writer Nelson Algren Chicago Tribune - Rick Kogan • 1h The writer Nelson Algren used to drink in the apartment where I grew up, joining other writers and pals of my parents in regular gatherings, filling the living room with conversations, cigarette and cigar smoke and the clinking of ice against cocktail glasses.
The Final Hours
This is a story about what happens when you are stateless and powerless—the daily humiliations, the endless waiting, the impossible choices, the dependence on strangers, the danger in every official encounter, the high price of survival, the struggle for dignity. Safia Noori and Fakhruddin Elham are a young Afghan couple who both served in the Afghan special forces, fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan.
The Venture-Capital Populist
Listen1.0x 0:0048:27 The courtship between Silicon Valley and MAGA was consummated on June 6, 2024, in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, on a street known as “Billionaires’ Row,” at the 22,000-square-foot, $45 million French-limestone mansion of a venture capitalist named David Sacks. Along with Chamath Palihapitiya, a fellow venture capitalist and a colleague on the All-In podcast, Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump.
The Venture-Capital Populist
3 days ago What happens when you combine artificial intelligence with deadly weapons? That’s one of the pressing issues facing David Sacks, special adviser to President Donald Trump on all things AI. And as we see the rapid expansion and adoption of artificial intelligence — not to mention a growing anxiety …
The End of Human Rights
“If there is an office called ‘Human Rights,’ it seems its employees have closed their eyes and ears.” While bombs and drones explode across the Middle East, in Pakistan an Afghan family is hiding from the police. Saman; her husband, Farhad; and their two small children never leave their room, never see sunlight. They’ve been living as refugees in Islamabad since fleeing Afghanistan four years ago.
Abandoned by America
While bombs and drones explode across the Middle East, in Pakistan an Afghan family is hiding from the police. Saman; her husband, Farhad; and their two small children never leave their room, never see sunlight. They’ve been living as refugees in Islamabad since fleeing Afghanistan four years ago.
The End of Human Rights
Strikes hit Iran and Tehran targets Israel and Gulf states amid mixed signals over talks to end war DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Airstrikes battered Iran and Iranian missiles and drones targeted Israel’s Tel Aviv and sites across the Mideast on Tuesday, even as President Donald Trump said the United States was in talks with the Islamic Republic to end the war. With thousands more U.S. …
The College-Educated Working Class
This is an age of mutinies. For more than a decade in America, they’ve come so thick and fast that they trip over one another: the Tea Party, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the Resistance, the anti-lockdown protests, the insurrection, the anti-ICE protests. The ur-mutiny, encompassing some of these, provoking and provoked by others, is MAGA. Even in full authoritarian control of the federal government, it still acts like a rioter laying dynamite at the foundation of a decayed establishment.
The College-Educated Working Class
These states have the highest and lowest income tax rates for 2026 Taxes never feel so burdensome as during tax season, which runs for another month in 2026. And if you happen to live in Oregon, you may be feeling that burden more than most. Oregon has the highest effective tax rate of any state, according to a report from the personal finance site FinanceBuzz, …
Hubris Without Idealism
During the Gulf War, in February 1991, George H. W. Bush called on the Iraqi people to “take matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Coalition aircraft dropped leaflets urging Iraqi civilians and troops to rise up. But when the country’s oppressed Shia and Kurdish populations followed that exhortation, Hussein’s surviving forces crushed them, killing tens of thousands of people, while the United States military stood by and did nothing.
Hubris Without Idealism
During the first Gulf War, in February 1991, George H. W. Bush called on the Iraqi people to “take matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Coalition aircraft dropped leaflets urging Iraqi civilians and troops to rise up. But when the country’s oppressed Shia and Kurdish populations followed that exhortation, Hussein’s surviving forces crushed them, killing tens of thousands of people, while the United States military stood by and did nothing.
What Should Americans Do Now?
The killings in Minneapolis of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been compared to the murder of George Floyd, because they all happened within a few miles of one another, and because of the outrage they inspired. There’s an important difference, though: In 2020 the United States was in turmoil, but it was still a state of law. Floyd’s death was followed by investigation, trial, and verdict—by justice. The Minneapolis Police Department was held accountable and ultimately made to reform.
What Should Americans Do Now? Original
The killings in Minneapolis of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been compared to the murder of George Floyd, because they all happened within a few miles of one another, and because of the outrage they inspired. There’s an important difference, though: In 2020 the United States was in turmoil, but it was still a state of law. Floyd’s death was followed by investigation, trial, and verdict—by justice. The Minneapolis Police Department was held accountable and ultimately made to reform.
Nostalgia for American Hypocrisy
Two decades ago, Richard N. Haass, a senior foreign-policy official in the George W. Bush administration, confessed that he would go to his grave not knowing why the United States had invaded Iraq. “A decision was not made,” Haass told me. “A decision happened, and you can’t say when or how.” I thought of this astonishing remark after Saturday’s military action in Caracas.
Condemning Millions for One Man’s Crime
Most of us are lucky enough to avoid any direct encounter with the true nature of Donald Trump’s presidency. But over time, abstract nouns such as authoritarianism and xenophobia lose their hard edges with too much use. It can take some personal experience to bring home what the Trump administration is doing to human lives and values.
How Trump Corrupted the Intellectual Right
“In the United States at this time,” the critic Lionel Trilling wrote in 1950, “liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.” Conservatives and reactionaries, Trilling added, had no ideas, only impulses—“irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” Whether the point was true in mid-century America—the reactionary writer Richard M.
An Anatomy of the MAGA Mind
2 days ago A new book traces the intellectual origins of Trumpism—straight into the void. In 2018, at a rally in Houston, Donald Trump articulated a distinction that was becoming central to the American right. “A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well,” Trump said. This involved “not caring …
Two Worlds: A Guest Post by George Packer
Two Worlds: A Guest Post by George Packer National Book Award-winning author George Packer returns with a captivating story set in a dystopian landscape. Read on for an exclusive essay from George on what went into writing The Emergency. Hardcover $26.00 $29.00 By George Packer In Stock Online Hardcover $26.00 $29.00 Please enable javascript to add items to the cart. George Packer’s gripping fable of imperial collapse illuminates the crises of our times.
WATCH Explaining America’s “Emergency”
Yesterday we talked with the brilliant writer and journalist George Packer, author of The Assassin’s Gate, about the Iraq War and the evolution of the War on Terror, and The Unwinding, about the coming apart of the American social order in recent decades. He’s got a new book out, The Emergency, his first novel in more than 25 years, in which he takes on a question he’s often explored in his journalism: how can people who believe in very different foundational stories live together?
The Books We Still Want to Read in 2025
This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Jeff and Rebecca talk about the books they still want to get to before 2026 gets here. Follow the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Subscribe to The Book Riot Newsletter for regular updates to get the most out of your reading life. The Book Riot Podcast is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network.
The Emergency a book by George Packer
Description George Packer’s gripping fable of imperial collapse illuminates the crises of our times. George Packer’s bestselling nonfiction work exploring American life has won many prizes, including the National Book Award. With The Emergency, he turns to fiction, bringing us a visionary novel that goes to the nerve center of what it means to live in a time of fracture and upheaval. An empire has collapsed from boredom and loss of faith in itself.
We Are Not One | The Atlantic - news - Read this story on Magzter.com
The Atlantic | December 2025 When it came into view, Doctor Rustin was struck by its size. The platform rose on six-by-six wooden posts at least 12 feet off the ground, with enough room up top for a small deck party, and the staircase from the sidewalk was a steeply pitched ladder. This gallows had been raised to last—built not only by children but for them, since few adults would have the agility and daring to reach the top.
George Packer: ‘We Are Not One’
Listen1.0x 0:0018:27 Listen to more stories on hark When it came into view, Doctor Rustin was struck by its size. The platform rose on six-by-six wooden posts at least 12 feet off the ground, with enough room up top for a small deck party, and the staircase from the sidewalk was a steeply pitched ladder. This gallows had been raised to last—built not only by children but for them, since few adults would have the agility and daring to reach the top.
Why Journalism Needs Literature Original
A few days ago, my imagination converged in a disturbing way with Donald Trump’s. After the president posted an AI-generated video of himself piloting a fighter plane and releasing a flood of excrement onto thousands of demonstrators below, I heard from several people who had read my new novel, The Emergency, which will be published next month. They pointed out the resemblance of the video to a scene, near the novel’s end, in which human feces become a primitive weapon of civil war.
No Kings, Only Decent Americans Original
Radicalized By Basic Decency read the sign of a middle-aged man in a ball cap and fleece jacket. Among the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people lining the main street of a small town in upstate New York on a perfect fall Saturday afternoon, this man and his words stuck with me. He was the sort of mild, ordinary-looking person you’d never notice in a crowd if not for his sign. And that was true of almost everyone.
How MAGA Got to “I Love Hitler”
How we got to “I love Hitler.” When leaders of Young Republican groups around the country exchange texts that say “I love Hitler”; that joke about gas chambers and rape, approve of slavery, sneer about “watermelon people” and monkeys in zoos, and throw around words like faggot and retarded, they aren’t just exposing their own anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, and misogyny. To see only the varieties of bigotry with which we’re painfully familiar is to miss the depth of MAGA’s moral collapse.
The Depth of MAGA’s Moral Collapse Original
When leaders of Young Republican groups around the country exchange texts that say “I love Hitler”; that joke about gas chambers and rape, approve of slavery, sneer about “watermelon people” and monkeys in zoos, and throw around words like faggot and retarded, they aren’t just exposing their own anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, and misogyny. To see only the varieties of bigotry with which we’re painfully familiar is to miss the depth of MAGA’s moral collapse.
I Don’t Want to Stop Believing in America’s Decency
Listen1.0x 0:0023:17 Listen to more stories on hark To be a patriot in Donald Trump’s America is like sitting through a loved one’s trial for some gruesome crime. Day after day your shame deepens as the horrifying testimony piles up, until you wonder how you can still care about this person. Shouldn’t you just accept that your beloved is beyond redemption?
America’s Zombie Democracy
Its trappings remain, but authoritarianism and AI are hollowing out our humanity. First published in The Atlantic on September 24, 2025. by George Packer, The Atlantic October 2, 2025 | reading time: 15 Min.
Opinion: America's Zombie Democracy
Opinion: America’s Zombie Democracy By Cheechako By George Packer, The Atlantic Online We are living in an authoritarian state. It didn’t feel that way this morning, when I took my dog for his usual walk in the park and dew from the grass glittered on my boots in the rising sunlight. It doesn’t feel that way when you’re ordering an iced mocha latte at Starbucks or watching the Patriots lose to the Steelers. The persistent normality of daily life is disorienting, even paralyzing. Yet it’s true.
Opinion: America’s zombie democracy
We are living in an authoritarian state. It didn’t feel that way this morning, when I took my dog for his usual walk in the park and dew from the grass glittered on my boots in the rising sunlight. It doesn’t feel that way when you’re ordering an iced mocha latte at Starbucks or watching the Patriots lose to the Steelers. The persistent normality of daily life is disorienting, even paralyzing. Yet it’s true.
The new authoritarianism: AI turns convenience into control
From Facebook’s data scandal to AI-driven surveillance, technology is reshaping democracy by quietly trading freedom for convenience, writes Paul Budde. Cambridge Analytica to AI control The scandal of Cambridge Analytica in 2018, where the data of 87 million Facebook users was harvested and sold to Republican campaigns, should have been a turning point. Instead, it normalised the idea that surveillance works — and should be expanded.
American Tyranny Original
We are living in an authoritarian state. It didn’t feel that way this morning, when I took my dog for his usual walk in the park and dew from the grass glittered on my boots in the rising sunlight. It doesn’t feel that way when you’re ordering an iced mocha latte at Starbucks or watching the Patriots lose to the Steelers. The persistent normality of daily life is disorienting, even paralyzing. Yet it’s true.
The Tragedy of Charlie Kirk’s Killing Original
In December 2023, I spent half a minute with Charlie Kirk in the bowels of the Phoenix Convention Center. Turning Point USA, the youth organization that he founded in 2012 and built into a right-wing juggernaut, was holding its annual convention in the city that the Chicago-born Kirk had made his home. Tall and dark-haired, he was moving quickly with a group of aides through a crowd of admirers.
The Tragedy of Charlie Kirk’s Killing
OREM, Utah (AP) — Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump who played an influential role in rallying young Republican voters, was shot and killed Wednesday at a Utah college event in what the governor called a political assassination carried out from a rooftop. …
Boy from the North Country
A man convinced he could be Bob Dylan’s son returns home to care for his ailing mother in Sussman’s gorgeous autobiographical debut. Evan Klausner, a 26-year-old aspiring writer, is devastated when his strong-willed mother, June, announces she has ovarian cancer, and he returns home to the Hudson Valley from London to take care of her.
Beasts of the Sea
Turpeinen’s fantastic debut interweaves the fate of an extinct aquatic species with the stories of the people who discovered and destroyed it. In 1741, naturalist George Steller finds a previously undocumented species of sea cow (a relative of the manatee) while sailing with a Russian expedition charting the Arctic coast. After their vessel founders, he and his shipmates take shelter on an uninhabited island, where they butcher the sea cows for food.
The Emergency by George Packer
Packer, a journalist and winner of the National Book Award for The Unwinding, delivers a propulsive Orwellian novel set in a strange future world known as “the empire.” The story’s beleaguered hero, Dr. Hugo Rustin, chief surgeon at a hospital in the empire’s unnamed capital city, initially brushes off the Emergency, which begins when the city’s ruling elite flees and teenage looters take to the streets. “These things never last,” Hugo reassures his wife and their two children.
Emergency
Uitgeverij Van Ditmar Boekenimport B.V. Imprint Farrar, Straus and Giroux Uitgegeven als Hardcover Eerste editie 25-08-2025 Laatste editie 11-11-2025 ISBN 9780374614720 Aantal pagina's 416 Taal Engels Hoogste positie Hebban Rank 6504
Opinion: How not to fix American democracy
Is America a democracy? Reactionaries, such as the activist Charlie Kirk and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, say it is not, never was, and shouldn’t be. They justify the antidemocratic features of the Constitution and contemporary politics — the Electoral College, the gerrymander — with the label republican, meaning a representative system with guardrails that protect political minorities (and happen to keep their side in power).
How Not to Fix American Democracy Original
Is America a democracy? Reactionaries, such as the activist Charlie Kirk and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, say it is not, never was, and shouldn’t be. They justify the antidemocratic features of the Constitution and contemporary politics—the Electoral College, the gerrymander—with the label republican, meaning a representative system with guardrails that protect political minorities (and happen to keep their side in power).
How Not to Fix American Democracy
Caffeinated coffees are mostly free of toxins, with a few exceptions That cup of joe that jolts you awake in the morning is pretty safe when it comes to contaminants and toxins, a new investigation has found. Well … almost. “While some contaminants were present, most were found at minimal levels and well below the European Union’s safety limits per 6-ounce serving. …
Buckeye
Patrick Ryan. Random House, $30 (464p) ISBN 978-0-593-59503-9 In this heartfelt novel from Ryan (The Dream Life of Astronauts), a V-E Day kiss between two strangers reverberates across decades. In a small town in Ohio, Cal Jenkins is unable to serve in WWII because one of his legs is two inches shorter than the other. He enters a mismatched marriage with a medium named Becky Hanover, clerks in his father-in-law’s hardware store, and fathers a child, Skip.
No One Can Offer Any Hope Original
Listen1.0x 0:0010:56 Listen to more stories on the Noa app. Sign up for Trump’s Return, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump presidency. Every month or so I get a desperate message from a 25-year-old Afghan refugee in Pakistan. Another came just last week. I’ve written about Saman in the past. Because my intent today is to write about her place in the moral universe of Elon Musk and Vice President J. D.
‘No One Can Offer Any Hope’
12 hours ago Joni Ernst spins "we're all going to die" as Christian compassion Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, certainly has absorbed the first rule of MAGA: You're never in the wrong as long as you're "triggering" the liberals.
The Talented Mr. Vance
J. D. Vance poses a problem, and at its core is a question about character. In the years after the 2016 election, he transformed himself from a center-right memoirist and public speaker, offering a complex analysis of America’s social ills and a sharp critique of Donald Trump, into a right-wing populist politician whose illiberal ideas and vitriolic rhetoric frequently out-Trump the original.
Show More
loading
Actions
Get in touch with George
Contact George, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack