About this item
The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. They were alternately known as "waste people", "offals", "rubbish", "lazy lubbers", and "crackers". By the 1850s the downtrodden included so-called "clay eaters" and "sandhillers", known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. In White Trash, Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about Americas supposedly class-free society. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early 19th century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJs Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nations history. With Isenbergs landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.
About the Author
Nancy Isenberg is the author of Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in Biography. She is the coauthor, with Andrew Burstein, of Madison and Jefferson (2010) and The Problem of Democracy (2019) . She is the T. Harry Williams Professor of American History at LSU. Isenberg is the winner of the 2016 Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and was #4 on the 2016 Politico 50 list. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Charlottesville, Virginia.
