Throughout his career as a journalist, George Packer has always been attuned to the voices and stories of individuals caught up in the big ideas and events of contemporary history. “Interesting Times ”unites brilliant investigative pieces such as “Betrayed,” about Iraqi interpreters, with personal essays and detailed narratives of travels through war zones and failed states. Spanning a decade that includes the September 11 attacks and the election of Barack Obama, Packer brings insight and passion to his accounts of the war on terror, Iraq, political writers, and the 2008 election. Across these varied subjects a few key themes recur: the temptations and dangers of idealism; the moral complexities of war and politics; the American capacity for self-blinding and self-renewal.

Whether exploring American policies in the wake of September 11, tracking a used T-shirt from New York to Uganda, or describing the ambivalent response in Appalachia to Obama, these essays hold a mirror up to our own troubled times and showcase Packer’s unmistakable perspective, which is at once both wide-angled and humane.

George Packer is the author of two novels and two works of non-fiction, most recently Blood of the Liberals, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, he contributes to “The New York Times Magazine,” “The New Yorker,” “Dissent,” and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.