White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)


Part I: To Begin the World Anew

Chapter One: Taking Out the Trash: Waste People in the New World

Chapter Two: John Locke’s Lubberland: The Settlements of Carolina and Georgia

Chapter Three: Benjamin Franklin’s American Breed: The Demographics of Mediocrity

Chapter Four: Thomas Jefferson’s Rubbish: A Curious Topography of Class

Chapter Five: Andrew Jackson’s Cracker Country: The Squatter as Common Man


Part II: Degeneration of the American Breed

Chapter Six: Pedigree and Poor White Trash: Bad Blood, Half-Breeds, and Clay-Eaters

Chapter Seven: Cowards, Poltroons, and Mudsills: Civil War as Class Warfare

Chapter Eight: Thoroughbreds and Scalawags: Bloodlines and Bastard Stock in the Age of Eugenics

Chapter Nine: Forgotten Men and Poor Folk: Downward Mobility and the Great Depression

Chapter Ten: The Cult of the Country Boy: Elvis Presley, Andy Griffith, and LBJ’s Great Society


Part III: The White Trash Makeover

Chapter Eleven: Redneck Roots: Deliverance, Billy Beer, and Tammy Faye

Chapter Twelve: Outing Rednecks: Slumming, Slick Willie, and Sarah Palin

EPILOGUE. America’s Strange Breed: The Long Legacy of White Trash