George Packer is an American journalist, novelist and playwright. Packer's parents, Nancy Packer and Herbert Packer, were both academics at Stanford University; his maternal grandfather was George Huddleston, a congressman from Alabama. His sister, Ann Packer, is also a writer. Packer graduated from Yale College, where he lived in Calhoun College, in 1982, and served in the Peace Corps in Togo. 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 is a columnist for Mother Jones... and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since May 2003. He was a Holtzbrinck Fellow Class of Fall 2009 at the American Academy in Berlin. The title of his project there is Enlightenment and War. His most recent 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 and has been described as a "vocal supporter" of that war by Glenn Greenwald.
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