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

"As a British-born American citizen, I bought wholeheartedly into one of America’s founding myths: That Americans, through some rare good fortune, escaped the burdens of class that plagued mother England. In her brilliant new book White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg shatters the illusion that, at least if you were white and male, you could achieve whatever you wanted in this vast new land of opportunity. Instead, Isenberg introduces us to the “lubbers,” the “clay-eaters,” the “crackers” — all the marginalized people who were shipped off to the Colonies, “simply to throw down manure and die in a vacuous muck.” Isenberg tells a fascinating story of the troubling pervasiveness of class throughout American history, and it’s a must read for anyone who wants to understand the role classism still plays in today’s politics."