The Richardson American Studies Lecture Series

The Georgetown University American Studies Program 
 30th anniversary address in 
The Richardson American Studies Lecture Series

Thursday, October 19th, 2017 

Riggs Library 

doors at 4:45PM, lecture at 5:00PM

Reception to follow

“How America Came Unwound” 
The failure of America’s democratic institutions didn’t happen overnight. The Trump era was a long time coming. 
by George Packer

George Packer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2003. He is the author, most recently, of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, a New York Times bestseller, which won the 2013 National Book Award for non-fiction. He has published four other works of non-fiction, including The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq; two novels; and a play, “Betrayed”, based on a New Yorker article, which ran five months Off Broadway in 2008 and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. Packer has been a Guggenheim Fellow and twice a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. In 2016-17 he was a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library and a New America Foundation Fellow. He is currently writing a book on Richard Holbrooke and the end of the American Century.