White trash : the 400-year untold history of class in America Cover Image

Book

White trash : the 400-year untold history of class in America / Nancy Isenberg.

Summary:

"A history of the class system in America from the colonial era to the present illuminates the crucial legacy of the underprivileged white demographic, citing the pivotal contributions of lower-class white workers in wartime, social policy, and the rise of the Republican Party,"--NoveList.

Record details

ISBN: 0670785970
ISBN: 9780670785971
Physical Description: xvii, 460 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Publisher: New York, New York : Viking, [2016]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Fables we forget by -- To begin the world anew. Taking out the trash : waste people in the New World ; John Locke's Lubberland : the settlements of Carolina and Georgia ; Benjamin Franklin's American breed : the demographics of mediocrity ; Thomas Jefferson's rubbish : a curious topography of class ; Andrew Jackson's cracker country : the squatter as common man -- Degeneration of the American Breed. Pedigree and poor white trash : bad blood, half-breeds and clay-eaters ; Cowards, Poltroons, and mudsills : civil war as class warfare ; Thoroughbreds and scalawags : bloodlines and bastard stock in the age of eugenics ; Forgotten men and poor folk : downward mobility and the Great Depression ; The cult of the country boy : Elvis Presley, Andy Griffith, and LBJ's Great Society -- The white trash makeover. Redneck roots : Deliverance, Billy Beer, and Tammy Faye ; Outing Rednecks : slumming, Slick Willie, and Sarah Palin -- America's strange breed : the long legacy of white trash.