#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • An instant American classic and almost
certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner The New
York TimesThe Pulitzer Prize–winning bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines
the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still
defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author.#1 NONFICTION
BOOK OF THE YEAR: TimeONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post The New York
Times Los Angeles Times The Boston Globe O: The Oprah Magazine NPR Bloomberg The
Christian Science Monitor New York Post The New York Public Library Fortune Smithsonian
Magazine Marie Claire Slate Library Journal Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Carl Sandberg
Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist •
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN John
Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN Jean Stein Book Award Longlist • Kirkus
Prize Finalist As we go about our daily lives caste is the wordless usher in a darkened
theater flashlight cast down in the aisles guiding us to our assigned seats for a
performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which
groups have it and which do not.” In this brilliant book Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful
portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores through an immersive deeply
researched and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people how America today
and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system a rigid hierarchy of human
rankings. Beyond race class or other factors there is a powerful caste system that
influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of
America India and Nazi Germany Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems
across civilizations including divine will bloodlines stigma and more. Using riveting
stories about people—including Martin Luther King Jr. baseball’s Satchel Paige a single
father and his toddler son Wilkerson herself and many others—she shows the ways that the
insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the
racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews she discusses why the cruel
logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure
themselves against she writes about the surprising health costs of caste in depression and
life expectancy and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally she
points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of
human divisions toward hope in our common humanity. Original and revealing Caste: The Origins
of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history and a reexamination of what
lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
