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.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
Gabriela Pesqueira The Moral Case Against Equity Language
What’s a “justice-involved person”?
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
Getty This Is Not 1943
How Putin twists the history of World War II
-
![]()
Alberto Miranda A New Theory of American Power
The United States can—and must—wield its power for good.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
Jocelyn Augustino / Redux The Media Are Still Making the Same Mistake With Trump
Journalists—and all of us—are better off ignoring him.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
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.
-
![]()
Sergiy Maidukov Ukrainians Are Defending the Values Americans Claim to Hold
“You cannot just remain silent, you cannot remain still. You have to do something.”
-
![]()
City of Asylum Pittsburgh / The Atlantic Free Speech Can’t Survive as an Abstraction
People must be willing to defend it.
-
![]()
AFP / Getty Remember Zawahiri’s Victims
I have to admit that the terrorist’s end leaves me cold. Revenge is sour because it always comes too late.
-
![]()
Paul Spella / The Atlantic; Getty The Rotten Core of Our Political System
In their new account of the 2020 election, two New York Times reporters reveal just how broken American democracy has become.
-
![]()
Joe Raedle / Getty I Worry We’ll Soon Forget About Ukraine
Americans need to cure what ails our democracy, ridding ourselves of our incipient Russification.
-
![]()
Oliver Munday / The Atlantic All Creatures Great and Small
The country the Russians came to destroy, in fighting for its life, has become one that extends solidarity and love beyond its human citizens.
-
![]()
Oliver Munday / The Atlantic ‘I Know the Government Fell, but I Never Fell’
Women who served in the Afghan military are pleading for help, as Taliban fighters are hunting them down.
-
![]()
Illustration by Oliver Munday. Source: Getty The Grown-Ups Are Losing It
We’ve turned schools into battlefields, and our kids are the casualties.
-
![]()
Chris McGrath / Getty Ukraine Is Redefining America’s Interests
If this conflict is a new cold war, it’s one that the autocracies have been pursuing energetically and the democracies have been loath to accept.
-
![]()
Adam Maida / The Atlantic We Are All Realists Now
The NBA has Enes Kanter Freedom where it wants him—out of sight, out of mind, like the Uyghurs themselves.
-
![]()
Andrew Quilty / Agence VU’ The Betrayal
America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan added moral injury to military failure. But a group of soldiers, veterans, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save Afghan lives and salvage some American honor.
