Unwinding (Packer)

Author Bio
• Birth—August 13, 1960
• Where—Santa Clara, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale College
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City


George Packer is an American journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best known for his writings for The New Yorker about U.S. foreign policy and for his related book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. More recently he wrote "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America," covering the history of America from 1978-2012.

Life and career
Packer was born in Santa Clara, California. Packer's parents, Nancy (nee Huddleston) and Herbert Packer, were both academics at Stanford University; his maternal grandfather was George Huddleston Jr., a congressman from Alabama. His great-grandfather, George Huddleston Sr., was also a congressman from Alabama in the earlier part of the 20th Century. His sister, Ann Packer, is also a writer. His father was Jewish and his mother was from a Christian background.

Packer graduated from Yale College, where he lived in Calhoun College, in 1982, and served in the Peace Corps in Togo. His essays and articles have appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, World Affairs, Harper's, New York Times, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Packer was a columnist for Mother Jones and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since May 2003.[6]

Packer was a Holtzbrinck Fellow Class of Fall 2009 at the American Academy in Berlin.

His book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq analyzes the events that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and reports on subsequent developments in that country, largely based on interviews with ordinary Iraqis. He was a supporter of the Iraq war. He was a finalist for the 2004 Michael Kelly Award.

A more recent book, "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America," covers American history from 1978-2012,focuses on the ways that America has changed in the 34 years covered. The book achieves this mainly by tracing the lives of various individuals from different backgrounds through the years. Interspersed are capsule biographies of influential figures of the time such as Colin Powell, Elizabeth Warren, Jay-Z and Raymond Carver.

He is married to Laura Secor and was previously married to Michele Millon.a (From .)