The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

The central thesis of the book is that America has changed between 1978 and the present. In that time period, “the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip” began to unwind (3). People born around 1960 or later have lived their adult lives in “the vertigo of that unwinding” and can no longer recognize the world of the past (3). The unwinding included the elimination of the institutions that held America together and that were replaced by a “void” that could only be filled with “organized money,” the “default force in American life” (3). That unwinding has had devastating effects on communities like the Piedmont and Youngstown as well as Tampa, a city that mirrors those communities. Where the Piedmont and Youngstown had existing infrastructure and communities that have been lost, Tampa created a community based only on filling that void with money. All of the communities end up in the same place and for the same reason (greed and stagnation), but they do not look alike in how the unwinding has affected them. While Youngstown is full of abandoned old houses, places like