George Packer

George Packer
George Packer at the 2013 Texas Book Festival
Born	(1960-08-13) August 13, 1960 Santa Clara, California
Occupation	Journalist, novelist, and playwright
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Yale College
Notable works	The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq
Notable awards	National Book Award for Nonfiction in November 2013 for The Unwinding
Spouse	Michele Millon (?-?) Laura Secor (present)
Relatives	Nancy (née Huddleston) and Herbert Packer (parents)

George Packer (born August 13, 1960) is an American journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his writings for The New Yorker about U.S. foreign policy and for his 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 to 2012. That book won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in November 2013.

Early life and education

Packer was born in Santa Clara, California.^[1] His parents both taught at at Stanford University: his mother Nancy (née Huddleston) was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in the Creative Writing Program and later professor of English, and his father, Herbert L. Packer, was a distinguished professor of Law, and the author of numerous books and articles. Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, Sr., had served eleven successive terms (1915–1937) representing Alabama's 9th congressional district in U.S. House of Representatives. His uncle, George Huddleston, Jr., succeeded to his father's seat in the the House of Representatives from 1954 to 1964.^[2] Packer's sister, Ann Packer, also is a writer. Their father's background was Jewish and their mother's Christian.^[3] Packer is married to writer and editor Laura Secor and previously was married to Michele Millon.

Graduated from Yale College in 1982, Packer resided at Calhoun College.^[4] He served in the Peace Corps in Togo.^[2]

Career

His essays and articles have appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, World Affairs, Harper's, The 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.^[5]

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

His book entitled, 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.

In July 2013 The New Yorker Festival released a video entitled, Geoffrey Canada on Giving Voice to the Have-nots, of a panel that was moderated by George Packer. Along with Canada, the panelists included Abhijit Banerjee, Katherine Boo, and Jose Antonio Vargas.^[6]

A more recent book, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, focuses on the ways that America changed in the years between 1978 and 2012. 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, Newt Gingrich, Elizabeth Warren, Jay-Z, and Raymond Carver.

Awards and honors

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• 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction, The Unwinding^[7][8]
• 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) shortlist for The Unwinding^[9][10]

Affiliations

Packer is a member of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's International Board of Directors.^[11]

Bibliography

References

External links

• George Packer articles at The New Yorker
• George Packer articles at Foreign Affairs
• George Packer articles at The New York Times
• Appearances on C-SPAN