PERSON: George Packer

The Atlantic

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George Packer (born August 13, 1960) is an American journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is best known for his writings about U.S. foreign policy for The New Yorker and The Atlantic and for his book The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. Packer also wrote The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, covering the history of the US from 1978 to 2012. In November 2013, The Unwinding received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. His award-winning biography, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, was released in May 2019. His latest book, Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, was released in June 2021.

Packer was born in California around 1960. His parents taught at Stanford University: his mother, Nancy Packer, 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 the U.S. House of Representatives. His uncle, George Huddleston, Jr., succeeded to his father’s seat in the House of Representatives from 1954 to 1964. Packer’s sister, Ann Packer, is also a writer. Their father’s background was Jewish and their mother’s Christian. In a 2022 talk for House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining program, Packer shared that his father took his own life when he (Packer) was 11 years old, calling it “the big event of my childhood.”

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