The New York Times Bestseller with a new preface from the author "This estimable book rides
into the summer doldrums like rural electrification. . . . It deals in the truths that
matter."-Dwight Garner The New York Times "This eye-opening investigation into our country's
entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant."-O The Oprah Magazine "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 bestselling history of the class system in
America Nancy Isenberg co-author of The Problem of Democracy 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 that
put Trump in the White House 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 to today's hillbillies. 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.
