On this edition of ST, we speak with the author and historian Nancy Isenberg, who is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at LSU, writes regularly for Salon.com, and was formerly on the History faculty here at The University of Tulsa. Isenberg joins us to discuss her widely acclaimed and bestselling new book, "White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America." It is, as one critic for The Boston Globe has noted, "an eloquent synthesis of the country's history of class stratification, one that questions whether the United States is indeed a place where all are created equal. 'White Trash' powerfully unites four centuries of history -- economic, political, cultural, and pseudo-scientific -- to show how thoroughly the notion of class is woven into the national fabric." It's also, as Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times, "an eloquent volume that is more discomforting and more necessary than a semitrailer filled with new biographies of the founding fathers and the most beloved presidents.... This estimable book rides into the summer doldrums like rural electrification." And further, from The Atlanta Journal Constitution: "What makes people whom Trump has never cared about before this election so eager to see him as their spokesman? What in tarnation do they see in his vague bluster and thinly coded racist remarks? For answers to these and other questions, look no further than Nancy Isenberg’s fascinating and unsettling new book...[a] meticulously researched survey of the class system in America."
From Historian Nancy Isenberg Comes "White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America"
