Christopher Hitchens on George Orwell - George Packer Interview (2009)

George Packer (born August 13, 1960) is an American journalist, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best known for his writings for The New Yorker about U.S. foreign policy and for his related book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq.

Packer was born in Santa Clara, California.[1] Packer's parents, Nancy (née Huddleston) and Herbert Packer, were both academics at Stanford University; his maternal grandfather was George Huddleston, a congressman from Alabama.[2] His sister, Ann Packer, is also a writer. His father was Jewish and his mother was from a Christian background.[3] Packer graduated from Yale College, where he lived in Calhoun College, in 1982,[4] and served in the Peace Corps in Togo.[5] His essays and articles have appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, World Affairs, Harper's, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Packer was a columnist for Mother Jones and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since May 2003.[6]

Packer was a Holtzbrinck Fellow Class of Fall 2009 at the American Academy in Berlin.

His book The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq analyzes the events that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and reports on subsequent developments in that country, largely based on interviews with ordinary Iraqis. He was a supporter of the Iraq war. He was a finalist for the 2004 Michael Kelly Award.

He is married to Laura Secor and was previously married to Michele Millon.

Books The Village of Waiting (1988). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1st Farrar edition, 2001). Pb. ISBN 0-374-52780-6 The Half Man (1991). Random House ISBN 0-394-58192-X Central Square (1998). Graywolf Press ISBN 1-55597-277-2 Blood of the Liberals (2000). Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-374-25142-8 The Fight is for Democracy: Winning the War of Ideas in America and the World (2003, as editor). Harper Perennial. Pb. ISBN 0-06-053249-1 The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (2005) Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2005 ISBN 0-374-29963-3 Betrayed: A Play (2008) Faber & Faber Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade (2009). ISBN 978-0-374-17572-6 The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013). ISBN 978-0-374-10241-8

Articles Packer, George (28 September 2009). "A Reporter at Large: The Last Mission". The New Yorker 85 (30): 38--55. Retrieved 22 February 2010. [Richard Holbrooke's plan to avoid the mistakes of Vietnam in Afghanistan]. Packer, George (15 March 2010). "A Reporter at Large: Obama's Lost Year". The New Yorker 86 (4): 40--51. Packer, George (12 September 2011). "A Reporter at Large: Coming Apart". The New Yorker. Retrieved 23 September 2011. [An assessment of the post 9/11 decade] Packer, George (27 May 2013). "A Reporter at Large: Change the World". The New Yorker. Retrieved 28 May 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P...