“If you were born around 1960 or afterward, you have spent your adult life in the vertigo of the unwinding.”

Packer defines the unwinding as the period when the coils that kept America together started to separate. The rest of the book looks at the causes and effects this, tracing the role of deindustrialization, deregulation, and greed in dismantling the strong institutions that had kept Americans united: the welfare state, nonpartisanship in Washington, education, unions, community groups, and the media. Packer uses the metaphor of unwinding to suggest that America has fundamentally changed and is no longer recognizable, although the metaphor also implies that the nation could be put together again.

“The people that built the roads followed the animals’ paths. And once that path is set, it takes a tremendous amount of effort and energy to take another path. Because you get in that set pattern of thinking, and it’s passed down generation to generation to generation...” 

Growing up, Dean realized those around him were stuck in a rut of doing the same things as their parents did. For Dean’s generation, coming of age during the unwinding, the world no longer offered the same certainties, as he and his classmates were no longer guaranteed a lifetime of good-paying jobs in tobacco or textiles. Because those existing paths failed him, Dean set out to make into reality the dream he had of forging new roads for others to follow, a dream that would lead him to biofuels.