Viking, 2016.
Review posted Jan 2017.
It's of course too true that the rich and powerful lord it over the poor and helpless in a variety of ways. Nancy Isenberg, the author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, studies how in the United States, the rich and powerful have used a powerful combination of myth, pseudo-science, and popular culture to convincingly denigrate those poor: crackers, hillbillies, niggers, welfare queens, trash of every description and breed. Even if you think you are really sympathetic to the underclass, reading this book will shock you to realize how from its very inception class distinction has been used at the same time that the elites assured us that we were a true democracy, beyond class distinctions. Isenberg is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at LSU.