The sinking era

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

It was as if the world collapsed overnight. All old rules of conduct and moral codes were cast aside. Lobbyists outnumbered politicians in Washington, there were no more taboos on Wall Street trading floors, real estate prices in Florida plummeted, steel factories in the Rust Belt closed one after another, and southern farms stopped growing tobacco. The rich got richer, and the poor got poorer. George Packer, winner of the National Book Award, tracks four Americans born in the 1960s from different social strata—a white Southern farmer pursuing the American Dream, an African American female worker who lost her factory job, an elite who shuttles between Wall Street and Washington, and a Silicon Valley titan who made his fortune through the internet economy—to depict four lives of ups and downs, uncover four kinds of class pain, and write about the anger and sorrow of a generation. This is the only generation of Americans whose lives have continually declined: they were born in the golden age of post-war economic growth, but after struggling for half a lifetime, they witnessed the collapse of traditional social structures. Beyond the stories of the main characters, this book, like a cinematic lens, surveys over thirty years of social change in America, painting a panoramic, flowing scroll interwoven with culture, economics, and politics. The author profiles figures such as politician Newt Gingrich, writer Raymond Carver, Walmart founder Sam Walton, and rapper Jay-Z, using ten iconic figures to reflect ten spirits of the times, some resonant, some decaying. It also records the thousands of speculators lost in the real estate market, the thousands of protesters occupying Wall Street, and the thousands of silent strugglers on the breadline, chronicling thirty years of the shattered American Dream. Reading *The Unwinding* is like sitting in the front row watching the midnight funeral of the American Dream. It is a requiem for every American, and a timely apocalypse about a turning point in history and a world in upheaval.

2021-01-01

文汇出版社

New Classic Culture

520

9787549633425