George Packer
American journalist and writer
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, The Emergency, was released in November 2025.
Early life and education
Packer was born in California around 1960. His parents taught at Stanford University: his mother, Nancy Packer (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., served eleven successive terms (1915–1937) representing Alabama's ninth congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. His uncle, George Huddleston, Jr., was later elected to Congress in the same district, serving from 1954 to 1964.
The public source identifies “George Packer” as american journalist and writer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around George, Packer and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5543155. VIAF identifies the subject as 51352. The Library of Congress control number is n87839695. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1978, 2012 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Packer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.