The Emergency

George Packer’s gripping fable of imperial collapse illuminates the crises of our times.

One ordinary late-spring day, the Emergency begins. In the city by the river where Burghers live, separate from the agricultural Yeoman faction, Dr. Rustin watches the old imperial structures authorities flee, airwaves falter, and officials disappear without a trace. The laws that once upheld strict harmony soon don’t fit anymore; the new idea of Together takes hold. Self-reliance and solidarity build across the population, from specialized committees deemed “self-orgs,” to We Are One gatherings for group decisions, to democratizing forms of address at the hospital where Rustin is the chief surgeon.

Everywhere people are rapidly adapting, taking action, but Rustin has doubts—which seem less and less welcome. Most troubling is that his beloved teenage daughter drifts further away by the day, lost to new technologies and community efforts.

Though Rustin is afraid, alienated by the present state of affairs, and unsure of what’s to come, when the story of a lost Yeoman boy reaches him, he resolves to go on a search, which will bring him not just closer to finding the child but ultimately toward what he still believes is valuable in his world. The Emergency is a soaring, captivating story of a man and a family amid a changing landscape, in which the award-winning author George Packer presents a tale of our times in a work of social and political urgency, revelation, and prophecy.