The Unwinding
George Packer · 2013
Three Americans caught in the collapse of institutions. Packer weaves their stories into a portrait of a country coming apart.
The case against
Packer borrows the Dos Passos collage and supplies vignettes where an argument should be. The celebrity interchapters (Oprah, Gingrich, Jay-Z) are acid thumbnails that explain nothing, and the book never says what unwound the country or what might rewind it. Diagnosis by anecdote: moving, atmospheric, and analytically empty.
Non-Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.