WRBH Reading Radio Logo, click to return to home page
"Reading Fine Print."
                    

White Trash: The 400-Year Old Untold History of Class in America

White Trash Book coverFEATURED NON-FICTION:

In her groundbreaking  bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and 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 who boosted Trump all the way to 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.” (via Amazon)

WRBH’s Best Seller Non-Fiction program airs Monday through Friday at 9AM and again at 7PM. Your reader for this book is Ellen Hazard and the music used in the open and close is:


More Posts for Show: Best Seller Non-Fiction

Leave a reply

Sign up for Our Newsletter
WRBH Daily Broadcast Schedule
Featured Books
* = required field
Coming up next...

View Full Daily Schedule
“Lessons in Chemistry” written by Bonnie Garmus

“Lessons in Chemistry” written by Bonnie Garmus

Featured Best-Selling Fiction Mon-Fri @ 9am, with replays @ 10pm, and overnight @ 3am #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GMA BOOK CLUB PICK • Meet Elizabeth Zott: “a gifted research chemist, absurdly self-assured and immune to social convention” (The Washington Post) in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show. • STREAM ON

Untitled Document
Want to listen to WRBH while you browse?
(*This will open a pop-up window that will begin playing our live broadcast - please disable pop-up blockers to proceed.)

LISTEN LIVE

Featured Sponsor:
WRBH 88.3 FM, Radio for the Blind and Print Handicapped, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and is the only full-time reading service on the FM dial in the United States. At WRBH, our mission is to turn the printed word into the spoken word so that the blind and print handicapped receive the same ease of access to current information as their sighted peers.

facebook logo - click to go to our facebook page Twitter logo - click to go to twitter page


3606 Magazine Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70115
Email: Production@WRBH.org | Fax: 504.899.1165
website designed by HERO|farm
Pending Certifications:
ISO, Section 508 Compliant
Verified by MonsterInsights