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

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

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-446) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction: Fables we forget by -- 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 -- 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 -- 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.