The title is definitely eye catching. I'm not often stopped in public to ask about what I'm reading but I had this out on a crowded and delayed subway line, when I heard two women sort of murmuring my way. When I looked up, one of the women looked at me and said "That is quite a book title." We talked about the book for a few minutes and they seemed intrigued. See books can bring people together.
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America is just what that subtitle describes. It's the class history of the U.S. There are apparently assumptions that the U.S. is a class-free society and all you needed to do was work hard and you could be upwardly mobile. Those assumptions feel like the type of the thing spouted in propaganda (I'm thinking the stereotypical 1950's classroom reels that would teach you about the dangers of communism) but fine.
As the title-title (as opposed to subtitle; I'm sure there's an actual word for that) suggests, this is specifically about white class. There isn't a huge amount of intersectionality going on in here. That isn't to say the book is bad but just, know its limits.
Isenberg starts in colonial America, citing many of the people who came over were indentured servants and thus the tradition of an underclass in the U.S. is begun. She goes through the Civil War to the Great Depression through today, with a focus on how "white trash" (aka, poor whites mostly in the South) were treated; sometimes with scorn, sometimes with amusement, never with respect. The book doesn't deal with much primary source from those in this lower class, though I suppose that is a problem with historic records that deals with any group other than those in power. They're just creating paper trails left and right.
The book is dense and a bit dry. I read a couple other books at the same time, cos some balance was needed here.* While I can't say I thought of the U.S. as an actually class-free society** it was still an education on a piece of American history I hadn't given too much thought to. Worth the read but perhaps there are some other books out there that provide a more complete picture and maaaaaaaaybe aren't quite so dry.
Gif rating:
**I keep writing classless and while yes, that sometimes, that's not quite what I mean.
Title quote from page 2
Isenberg, Nancy. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. Penguin, 2016.
