White trash The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
"This estimable book rides into the summer doldrums like rural electrification. . . . It deals in the truths that matter." -- Dwight Garner, The New York Times "White Trash will change the way we think about our past and present." -- T. J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Custer's Trials. In...
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| Format: | Downloads eBook Books eBook |
| Language: | English |
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2016.
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| Online Access: | Go to Downloadable eBook Here. |
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| Summary: | "This estimable book rides into the summer doldrums like rural electrification. . . . It deals in the truths that matter." -- Dwight Garner, The New York Times "White Trash will change the way we think about our past and present." -- T. J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Custer's Trials. In her groundbreaking New York Times bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg takes on our comforting myths about equality, uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing -- if occasionally entertaining -- poor white trash. "When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there's always a chance that the dancing bear will win," says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters boosting Trump have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. They were alternately known as "waste people," "offals," "rubbish," "lazy lubbers," and "crackers." By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called "clay eaters" and "sandhillers," known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society--where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics--a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation's history. With Isenberg's landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource |
| Format: | Requires OverDrive Read (file size: N/A KB) or Adobe Digital Editions (file size: 7491 KB) or Kobo app or compatible Kobo device (file size: N/A KB) or Amazon Kindle (file size: N/A KB). |
| ISBN: | 9781101608487 |
| Author Notes: | She is the author of Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America; Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (winner of the 2008 Oklahoma Book Award for non-fiction); Madison and Jefferson, co-authored with Andrew Burstein, was named one of the top five non-fiction titles of 2010 by Kirkus; and White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, which is a 2016 New York Times Bestseller. She has been featured on C-SPAN2 "Book TV," and on various NPR programs. She and Andrew Burstein are regular contributors to Salon.com. (Bowker Author Biography) |
