George Packer
He is the author of 10 books, including The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (a winner of the 2013 National Book Award); Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (the winner of the 2019 Hitchens Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Prize); and, most recently, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal. Before joining The Atlantic in 2018, he was a staff writer at The New Yorker for 15 years. He writes about American politics and culture and U.S. foreign policy.
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Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Fred W. McDarrah … The Campus-Left Occupation That Broke Higher Education
Elite colleges are now reaping the consequences of promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university.
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Clement Pascal / The New York Times / … Salman Rushdie Strikes Back
In a new memoir, the author reckons with the attack that nearly took his life.
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Illustration by Mike McQuade. Sources: Brooks Kraft / … What Does the Working Class Really Want?
Vying for its crucial support, neither Democrats nor Republicans are focusing on the essential question.
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Libkos / AP ‘We Only Need Some Metal Things’
Will America abandon Ukraine?
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Matt Huynh Is Journalism Ready?
The press has repeatedly fallen into Donald Trump’s traps. A second term could render it irrelevant.
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Stephen Voss / Redux What Kissinger Didn’t Understand
His blindness to human suffering was, in the end, both a moral failure and a strategic one.
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Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: … Why Activism Leads to So Much Bad Writing
Art and politics have very different agendas.
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Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Reuters. Israel Must Not React Stupidly
If this is Israel’s 9/11, it can learn from America’s mistakes.
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Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic; Source: … The Three Attacks on Intellectual Freedom
PEN struggles to reconcile its commitment to social justice with its commitment to free speech.
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Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Source: … How Virginia Took on Dominion Energy
For years, the company overcharged residents by billions of dollars, watchdogs say, while maintaining a vice grip on state politics.
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Olivier Douliery / AFP / Getty ‘We Are Not Ordinary People’
The fight to get American allies out of Afghanistan continues.
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Daniel Zender / The Atlantic; Getty A View of American History That Leads to One Conclusion
For many historians today, the present is forever trapped in the past and defined by the worst of it.
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Gabriela Pesqueira The Moral Case Against Equity Language
What’s a “justice-involved person”?
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Johannes Hähle / Lifestyle Pictures / Alamy The Masterpiece No One Wanted to Save
Censored and then forgotten, Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar, about the Nazi occupation of Kyiv, is again painfully relevant.
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Getty This Is Not 1943
How Putin twists the history of World War II
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Alberto Miranda A New Theory of American Power
The United States can—and must—wield its power for good.
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NYPL; Getty; Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic America Has Had It Worse
In his new book, Adam Hochschild remembers a time when a crusade for democracy abroad released a demonic spirit of intolerance and violence at home.
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Jocelyn Augustino / Redux The Media Are Still Making the Same Mistake With Trump
Journalists—and all of us—are better off ignoring him.
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Samuel Corum / Getty Should Oleksandra Matviychuk Share the Nobel Peace Prize With Russians?
Human-rights champions from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus will share the prize, given not to countries but to people working to change them.
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ABC Photo Archives / Getty I Wish My Friend Could Have Read Her Own Obituary
Anne Garrels may not have been the Queen of England, but she left an unforgettable legacy.
