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Blood of the Liberals

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks, August 2001
ISBN: 978-0-374-52778-5, ISBN10: 0-374-52778-4,
6 x 9 inches, 368 pages,
Trade Paperback, $16.00

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See All Categories Political Science General Works

Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

George Packer's maternal grandfather was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the 20th century—an agrarian liberal in the Jeffersonian mold who began his career fighting the forces of wealth and ended it opposing the New Deal. Packer's Jewish father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and administrator at Stanford whose convictions were fatally tested in the campus upheavals of the 1960s. The inheritor of two sometimes conflicting strains of the great American liberal tradition, Packer explores the ideals that shaped the lives of his forebears and describes his own struggle to carry on their tradition in our time, when large numbers of Americans have lost faith in politics.

From the iron works of Birmingham, Alabama, during the age of robber barons, to the postindustrial labs of Silicon Valley, Blood of the Liberals traces the intersection between public issues and private troubles, large historical currents and the frailties of individual character. "The story of each generation of my family," Packer writes, "is in a way the story of an inherited idea crashing up against the hard rock of new circumstance." Both a critique of liberalism and an affirmation of it, Blood of the Liberals gives a political voice to a new generation that has grown up without the certainties of earlier ones.

Praise

"Splendid . . . [Packer] skillfully weaves the travails of the reformist left through the equally tempestuous story of his own activist family. The result is a politically engaged memoir that sheds more understanding on the problems and promise of liberalism than a shelf full of hand-wringing or wistful post-mortems."—Michael Kazin, Chicago Tribune

"Packer, a gifted novelist and essayist, is that rare individual: an insightful observer of regional and American history, politics, and society who writes with unsentimental eloquence about those he loves. He has woven these personal and political stories into a seamless web of extraordinary insights . . . No review can begin to capture the subtleties, the insights, and the eloquence of George Packer's memoir. Historians often argue, sometimes unconvincingly, that an understanding of our past can illuminate the dilemmas of the present. I know of no book published in the last decade that fulfills that goal more eloquently. I can only urge the readers of The Alabama Review—whatever their political persuasion—to read Blood of the Liberals."—Dan T. Carter, University of South Carolina, The Alabama Review

"Remarkable . . . Belongs on the shelf next to Angela's Ashes, The Liars' Club, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."—Jack Hitt, The New York Times Book Review

"Blood of The Liberals is coherent, compelling and desperately urgent."—Wilson Carey McWilliams, San Francisco Chronicle

"I was fascinated and touched by [Blood of the Liberals], which can be described as 'memoir plus,' part personal recollection, part essay about subjects seldom treated as reverberating with such intimate meanings."—Scott Turow, The Washington Post Book World

"Packer's generous historical sweep, earnest intelligence, and profound commitment to the subject make this a difficult book to resist."—The New Yorker

"I've never read a book quite like George Packer's Blood of the Liberals. More than a learned history and revealing memoir, it's also an unsentimental but deeply felt love letter to the father he barely knew and the grandfather he never met. Packer shows American liberals where we've been and where we must go by sharing his story—a story that is heartbreaking, hopeful, and beautifully drawn."—George Stephanopoulos

About the Author(s)

George Packer

George Packer's journalism and essays have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, the 1997 Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Art of the Essay, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

photo: Copyright Greg Martin

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