The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

Dean Price came from a family of tobacco farmers in North Carolina. Growing up, he witnessed the decline of the Piedmont as various industries left. While the decline was ongoing, he invested in a number of convenience stores, gas stations, and fast food restaurants along U.S. Route 220, a major trucking route. After Hurricane Katrina led to fuel shortages, he became obsessed with the notion of peak oil and of trying to make biofuels the energy supply of the future. With two partners, he founded Red Birch Energy, the first biodiesel truck stop in America. This garnered him the attention of Congressman Tom Perriello and of the Obama Administration. However, the mortgage crisis ate away at his and his partners’ other businesses, and he ended up losing everything. At the end of the book, he has just started to have success with another biofuel business that he hopes will benefit local schools.

Dean is relentlessly optimistic and hopes to be a good role model for his sons despite his harsh upbringing under his own father, a failed preacher who became addicted to opioids and eventually killed himself. Dean is a devotee to the teachings of Napoleon Hill and believes that he can manifest success by thinking about it. His dream for success is not just for his own financial gain, though, as he hopes to create a brand new green economy that others in the area will partake in, allowing others to follow the symbolic roads he clears for them rather than sticking to the same mindsets he believes make people stay impoverished. Like most of the subjects in the book, Dean is initially optimistic about Obama's election but grows disillusioned. In his case, Dean is mostly upset about the failure of the administration to harness a new green economy. But he is equally turned off by the rabid conservatism of the Tea Party that energizes most of his neighbors.

Dean serves two main purposes in the book. First, he represents the rural southeast, one of the regions hardest hit by the unwinding. Second, his quest to make something new from the seeds of the past and to do so in a way that revitalizes the local area presents one potential path forward from the unwinding.

Jeff Connaughton began a decades-long working relationship with Joe Biden in 1979 when Biden spoke to his college campus. Connaughton, though, went to work in finance after college. Bored, he quit and joined the failed Biden 1988 presidential campaign as a fundraiser. That experience connected him with Biden’s longtime chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, who hired him to work on the Senate Judicial Committee. From that position, Connaughton ended up a clerk for Abner Mikva and then his assistant in the Clinton White House where Connaughton learned some of the ways power worked in Washington. After that, he became a partner at a lobbying firm, Quinn & Gillespie. In that role, he learned how money came to dominate Washington. That role also made him rich. After cashing in, he reconnected with Biden on his quixotic run for president in 2008 and then on his successful transition to vice president. In 2009, Connaughton became Kaufman’s chief of staff in the senate, and the two of them sought to punish bank executives and regulate them more closely. They did not succeed. Connaughton retired to Savannah where he wrote a memoir of his experiences in Washington: The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins.

Connaughton serves as the eyewitness to how Washington works in the book. In anchoring that discussion through Connaughton’s eyes, Packer gets the account of a man no longer trying to get employed in Washington or the world of finance. He doesn’t spin the story to suit his benefit, as indeed Connaughton admits to doing some morally suspect things (such as helping out a dictator in the Ivory Coast). His description of the Blob—the axis of power that moved between Washington and Wall Street—serves as a metaphor in the book for how interconnected the power structures in the United States are. Additionally, Connaughton’s transition from optimist to cynic is similar to the transitions other characters go through, notably Peter Thiel, who, like Connaughton, has far more exposure to actual power than do Dean or Tammy. Like Thiel, Connaughton is also able to insulate himself from the unwinding due to his personal wealth. Connaughton also provides proof that Wall Street executives were intentionally not punished by forces in Washington, lending credence to the dissatisfaction many voice in the book.

The child of a heroin addict, Tammy Thomas was mostly raised by her great grandmother, a woman who taught her the values of hard work and pride. As a child, Tammy spent some time at the Purnell Mansion, where her great grandmother was a maid. Growing up, she saw her hometown, Youngstown, Ohio, decay as the steel industry died in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The population shrank, property values fell, and unemployment, drugs, and crime rose. Tammy was the first member of her family to graduate high school, even though she was already a mother. Not wanting to be dependent on welfare, she got a job working the assembly line at a Packard Electric auto parts plant. That union job allowed her enough money and stability to raise her children and buy a house. In 2006, Delphi (the new name for Packard) closed most of its American plants, and she took a buyout; however, she lost most of her money in an investment she later recognized as a Ponzi scheme.

She took a job as a community organizer and activist for the Mahoning Valley Organizing Committee (MVOC), which taught her to be a leader. She helped make a map of abandoned properties in Youngstown and encouraged others to lead the revival of the city. In 2012, she also worked tirelessly on getting out the vote for Obama’s reelection.

Tammy offers Packer the opportunity to explore another community left behind by the unwinding: rustbelt cities. She also is one of the only characters of color in the story and the only main subject who is female. Tammy believes fate and God opened doors for her, and her experience with MVOC is one of the more rewarding experiences for any character in the book. Tammy is arguably the only person in the book who ends up better off than they started. Additionally, her focus on improving her home city by getting others involved in the community also suggests a path forward from the unwinding, as she, unlike others, creates a community that helps her thrive and that gives her and others a purpose. Packer argues that community life is missing from America today, and Tammy’s story provides a potential antidote to that.

Born in Germany, Peter Thiel came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s near Stanford. Thiel wanted to be rich and a right-wing intellect. To that end, he started a right-wing journal at Stanford and published The Diversity Myth before moving to New York to pursue a finance career. In New York, he further refined his nascent libertarian views. After moving back to the area then called Silicon Valley, Thiel founded PayPal with some of his friends and made a fortune when eBay bought it. He took that money and invested in a new venture, Clarium Capital, as well as Facebook. He made more money in those, although he lost quite a bit during the financial crash. That caused him to re-evaluate his theories about America, and he came to the conclusion that America was in a technological decline and that technology had not improved people’s lives in part because of government regulations and in part because of the complacency of the ruling class. He chose to invest in projects that would make money as well as potentially change the world. Thiel was especially interested in technology that could prolong his life or that could open up new paths to unregulated freedom.

In the book, Thiel provides a counterweight to the outlooks of virtually everyone else. His political philosophy makes him see the world as dog-eat-dog. He hopes to profit from that reality, and he does. His intelligence is obvious as is his business acumen, but he also ends up living a lonely life devoid of a real community beyond his circle of tech billionaires who can recognize that the middle class is dying but offer no real attempts to help. Indeed, Thiel is enamored with sci-fi and is inspired by the post-apocalyptic visions of many books, but where someone like Dean tries to find a bright side to that, Thiel embraces the darkness and tries to figure out how to be the one on top when the world ends. His philosophy offers another potential conclusion to the unwinding, although it seems to be one Packer hopes will not come to fruition.

Glenn Beck was a radio and TV host whose Fox News show encouraged members of his audience to meet up for the 9/12 Project. Karen Jaroch’s first political action starts as a result of that meeting. Beck is a leader of the Tea Party movement, and the book cites him frequently as a person who helps make Washington cease to function in anything but a partisan fashion.

Joe Biden was the youngest senator ever elected and inspired a young Jeff Connaughton to join politics. Biden failed to clinch the nomination for president in 1988 after a plagiarism scandal and a new media reality damaged him. As chairman of the justice and later the foreign affairs committees, Biden continued to be an important figure in Washington before being elected vice president in 2008 (and president in 2020, seven years after the publication of The Unwinding). Connaughton’s career in politics is anchored by Biden who he worked for in various capacities, and Biden seems to represent to Connaughton the good and the bad of politics.

William Jennings Bryan was a populist politician who ran for president several times in the 1890s and early 1900s. He was known for fighting for the common people and taking on corporate and banking interests. Packer makes several references to Bryan, implying that a similar populist movement could result from the mortgage crisis and the unwinding.

Rocky Carter was one of Dean’s mentors. He ran a successful construction business and fronted Dean money for many of his businesses, including Red Birch Energy which Carter joined as an equal partner before asking for his money back after the mortgage crisis and struggles of the company.

Chris Dodd was a Democratic senator from Connecticut. When Jeff Connaughton was a lobbyist, he used to regularly host fundraising breakfasts for senators including Dodd who would return his phone calls while the breakfasts were ongoing but who would ignore him otherwise. Later, as chair of the banking committee, Dodd proved to be a thorn in the side of Connaughton and Ted Kaufman, who wanted what became Dodd-Frank to be less generous to Wall Street. Dodd is an example in the book of the ways money and Wall Street had corrupted the city.

One of Matt Weidner’s clients, Jack Hamersma fought a foreclosure until he died of cancer. Hamersma, like many foreclosure victims, had experienced job loss, health problems, and mounting debts; he serves in the book as an example of the typical foreclosure case. He also gives voice to the ways that the whole foreclosure process divided people from the world, making it harder to form a mass movement against the banks.

The Hartzells are a family of very low income Tampa residents who suffer health problems and have trouble finding work beyond very low paying retail jobs. In the book, they provide an example of those left behind by America, those so poor that they never had anything to lose during the mortgage crisis although they still suffer its effects.

Miss Hattie was a former union leader at a factory job. Tammy convinced her to join the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, where she became a leader. Her role model was Tammy, and she became a powerful speaker and local celebrity because of the ways Tammy empowered her. She also planted community gardens, connecting her project and MVOC’s with the food movement started by Alice Waters.

Napoleon Hill was the author of the book Think and Grow Rich, which offered the teachings of the philosophy he developed after interviewing successful men such as Andrew Carnegie and Theodore Roosevelt. His advice included repeating one’s dreams so that they would be achieved, forming a master mind between two partners, and escaping the mindset of poverty and failure. The book was hugely influential on Dean Price, who quoted it liberally and ascribed to it like a holy text.

A friend of Peter Thiel’s from Stanford, Reid Hoffman worked with Thiel at PayPal where he made a fortune he later invested in LinkedIn and other companies. Hoffman is one of Thiel’s few liberal friends and later introduces Thiel to Sean Parker, through home Thiel invests in Facebook.

A historian famous for her books on city planning, Jane Jacobs espoused beliefs on ideal cities. She advocated for cities that had mixed use buildings and pedestrian areas that allowed for communal interactions. Mike Van Sickler was a believer in her philosophies, and he saw the way Tampa was developed as the antithesis of her beliefs. Packer seems to share this assessment.

A New Tampa housewife, Karen Jaroch becomes a Tea Party activist after being inspired by Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. She leads the successful “No Tax for Tracks” movement. The book uses her as a stand-in for the Tea Party at large and suggests that she (perhaps unwittingly) is being used by people like the Koch brothers in a grasstop organizing effort.

Ray Kachel was a tech worker from Seattle who lost his job and moved to New York to join Occupy Wall Street. His only home in New York was the park, and when the park was raided, he ended up homeless. Ray is included in the book to show both what the on-the-ground experience in Zuccotti Park was and also to show the consequences of mass movements that fail, leaving their adherents helpless and deflated.

Originally Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Ted Kaufman also inherited the last two years of Biden’s senate seat in 2009. Jeff Connaughton worked closely for years with Kaufman in various fundraising capacities before becoming the senator’s chief of staff after leaving his lobbying career. Kaufman and Connaughton fought to punish and reform Wall Street in 2009 and 2010, but they failed to convince even most of their own party to go along with them. Kaufman serves as a political mentor to Connaughton in the book and also represents the good that was still possible in some members of the political class.

Sonny Kim was the leader of a real estate scam in the Tampa area that bought cheap houses for another entity to turn over to developers. He made millions on fraudulent loans and pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges after a series of newspaper stories by Mike Van Sickler exposed his crimes. Van Sickler was dismayed to realize Kim was the only person who would face legal consequences for the scam, not the banks that helped facilitate it or the mortgage lenders who profited from it too.

The Kochs were a pair of Kansas oil and gas tycoons who invested heavily in conservative causes. In the book, their money is seen spent in election ads in 2010, and they were also the founders of Americans for Prosperity, Karen Jaroch’s eventual employer. The book uses the Kochs to represent the dark money interests that create “grasstop” movements in America, similar to the type of efforts organized by Connaughton in his lobbying days.

Sylvia Landis was a woman who had experienced the way the banks operated when she struggled to sell one of her properties before it could be foreclosed. After watching several foreclosure hearings in Tampa, she connected lawyers with people experiencing foreclosures, recognizing the fraud being committed by the banks. She serves as an example of someone who tried to organize the collective response to the crisis and the powers of the banks that many had hoped would be organized.

The original innovator of PayPal, Max Levchin met Peter Thiel after Thiel gave a lecture at Stanford. Thiel encouraged him to use his technology to create a cashless payment system with the ability to transfer money across handheld digital devices. The idea that caught on was PayPal, the part of the software that was free to sign up for and that did not require an additional device. Without Levchin, Thiel would likely not have been able to start his career as a tech investor.

A former Democratic congressman, Abner Mikva was a well-liked judge who took the job as Bill Clinton’s White House Counsel in 1994. He took Jeff Connaughton with him to work in an ambiguous assistant role. There, Mikva and Connaughton learned the Clinton White House demanded loyalty in the face of all the investigations being launched by Republicans and women who accused Clinton of sexual harassment. Mikva offered Connaughton his only taste of experience in the White House, and he remained impressed with simply being there and of the Clintons in general despite the ways Washington was changing.

Kevin Moore is an alias used by an anonymous Wall Street worker who made a great deal of money while working for a European bank that traded mortgages and collateralized debt. A native Manhattanite, Moore was also impressed by the Occupy Wall Street movement though he worried that the message was too hostile toward everyone working on Wall Street. Moore is used in the book to provide the point of view of Wall Street and also to suggest that the changing culture of the finance industry contributed to the mortgage crisis.

Kirk Noden formed the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative in 2007. He hired Tammy Thomas as an employee, recognizing a raw power she had. Kirk was pivotal in providing Tammy with new opportunities and experiences.

James O’Keefe was a political activist and self-described “civilian journalist” who made a series of undercover videos that led to the end of the social-service government organization ACORN. The videos were selectively edited, but Andrew Breitbart released them to attack the media itself. O’Keefe was also funded by Peter Thiel, and he is an example of a new vitriol in online media and the scorched earth style of politics started by Newt Gingrich.

Sean Parker was a founder of Napster who became an early investor of Facebook back when it was called Thefacebook. Peter Thiel met him through Reid Hoffman and chose to invest in Facebook as well. Parker also invested in other Thiel projects, and he is representative of the new class of billionaires from Silicon Valley.

Usha Patel is an Indian immigrant who invests in a Tampa-area motel by taking out a loan that turns out to be fraudulent. She fights the foreclosure process the bank (HSBC, which had acquired her original loan) starts and wins. Her fight serves as a source of triumph in the book, while also revealing the labyrinthine path the predatory mortgages took. She also keeps her faith in the American Dream, unlike most of the American-born characters in the book.

In 2008, Tom Perriello was elected as a Democrat to represent Virginia’s Fifth District in the US Congress. His politics aligned closely with Dean Price’s, and the two became supporters of each other. Perriello helped Dean secure federal funds for Red Birch Energy and tried to rally the public on a new green energy system. He was defeated for re-election in 2010 by a Republican fueled by the Tea Party. Perriello serves as an example of the type of idiosyncratic politician unable to survive in a partisan era.

Pete Price was Dean’s father. A racist man who failed at the various working-class jobs and preaching gigs he worked, Pete was abusive to Dean and ended up addicted to painkillers. He committed suicide in 2004, and his life was a painful reminder to Dean of failure and the poverty mindset that kept people down.

Jack Quinn was the cofounder (with Ed Gillespie and Jack Connaughton) of Quinn Gillespie and Associates, a successful lobbying firm. Unlike other firms, it included members of both parties who had access to top officials all over Washington. Quinn was an Al Gore guy and the person who hired Connaughton to be a lobbyist in the first place. The firm itself is indicative of the corrupting of Washington by moneyed interests.

David Sacks took over as editor of The Stanford Review, a conservative magazine founded by Peter Thiel. Under Sacks’ management, the magazine moved in a direction attacking gay rights and other culture war issues. Sacks is the co-author, with Thiel, of The Diversity Myth. He also worked with Thiel at PayPal and made a fortune that he used to invest in other tech startups.

Mark Sharpe was the Republican county commissioner of Hillsborough County. Though he had long blocked light rail initiatives, in 2010, he agreed to endorse it and put it on the ballot. He was challenged by the Tea Party for doing so, and he was disappointed at how narrow-minded and extremist his own party had become. He is, like Tom Perriello, one of the few political figures who shows an ability to think beyond partisan lines, although he also fails.

Gary Sink was a political conservative who agreed to invest with Dean and Rocky Carter in Red Birch Energy. The partnership started out well but failed as Gary became sick of Dean not contributing as much money and as Dean’s problems with his other businesses arose. Gary and Dean’s friendship fizzled, with Dean lamenting that Gary kicked him while he was down by cutting off his health insurance. He became a Tea Party Republican, suggesting that polarization contributed to the end of Gary and Dean’s business and to society at large.

Nelini Stamp was an activist employed by the Working Families Party. At 23 years old, she joined the Occupy Wall Street movement and became a liaison between the occupiers and traditional labor groups. Stamp gives voice to the organizers on the ground, and she offers a unique perspective as a person with both traditional organizing experience and Occupy Wall Street experience, allowing her to voice concerns about the ways the Occupy movement ended while also representing the hope that sprang from it.

Reid Teague was the owner of Eden Oil, one of the suppliers of Dean Price’s truck stops. Dean considered Teague a friend, but Teague sued Dean for $325,000 of unpaid fuel bills and became Dean’s nemesis. Dean thought it was Teague who was calling would-be business partners to warn them about Dean. Teague even ends up getting Dean’s house foreclosed to pay off the debt. He serves as an example of the way Dean’s past always comes back to haunt him.

Granny was Tammy Thomas’s great grandmother. She was the one who mostly raised Tammy and had the most impact on who Tammy would become. To Tammy, she represented the ethics of hard work and family, and the house she bought on Charlotte Avenue became a symbol for the ways Youngstown was being destroyed.

Vickie was Tammy Thomas’s mother. She was a heroin addict for most of her life, and Tammy was determined to not be like her. Still, she was her mother, and Tammy was sad she could not be with her when her mother died in 2012. Vickie’s addiction issues epitomize the ways drugs helped make Youngstown worse year by year, as addiction issues and gang warfare became ever more prevalent.

Turner started a pyramid scheme based on selling cosmetics and motivational tapes. Dean’s parents lost their money to the scheme, and the shadow of con artistry hung over Dean’s head the rest of his life. Turner also seems to be a counterweight to Napoleon Hill whose motivational ideas Dean was inspired by, and the book hints that Americans of middle-class or lower means are susceptible to all kinds of schemes like those Turner promoted.

Mike Van Sickler was a journalist for The St. Petersburg Times during the mortgage crisis. He did a series of stories on Sonny Kim’s fraudulent real estate crimes and also covered the effects of the mortgage crisis on regular Tampa citizens. A believer in Jane Jacobs’ ideas of good cities, he was upset about the ways the Tampa area developed. He also was dismayed to realize that facts were losing their importance in public debate as was the case for the debate over the light rail plan. Packer uses Van Sickler to show the changes in the media landscape as well as the changes in Tampa as a result of the unwinding.

Paul Volcker was the chairman of the Federal Reserve in the late 1970s. Later in life, he became critical of Wall Street and Washington. Connaughton and Ted Kaufman meet with him and try to insert the “Volcker Rule” into the bank reform bill. The “Volcker Rule” would go half way to reinstating Glass-Steagall, but the bill passes with a watered down version of it.