The Unwinding

Summary

A panoramic portrait of American institutional decay since the late 1970s, told through interlocking biographies of factory workers, lobbyists, tech entrepreneurs, and small-town strivers. Packer shows how deindustrialization, financial deregulation, and political dysfunction unraveled the postwar social contract that had sustained ordinary Americans. Modeled on John Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy, the book uses a kaleidoscopic structure to chronicle a country coming apart.