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Class

Author: Paul Fussell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671792253
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This book describes the living-room artifacts, clothing styles, and intellectual proclivities of American classes from top to bottom.

Class in American Society

Author: Leonard Reissman
Publisher: London : Routledge & K. Paul
ISBN:
Category : Social classes
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description

White Trash

Author: Nancy Isenberg
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110160848X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
The New York Times bestseller A New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016 Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction One of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads San Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended books A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016 Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016 “Formidable and truth-dealing . . . necessary.” —The New York Times “This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.” —O Magazine In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash. “When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters who boosted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. 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. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth 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–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.

Class Matters

Author: The New York Times
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9781429956697
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The acclaimed New York Times series on social class in America—and its implications for the way we live our lives We Americans have long thought of ourselves as unburdened by class distinctions. We have no hereditary aristocracy or landed gentry, and even the poorest among us feel that they can become rich through education, hard work, or sheer gumption. And yet social class remains a powerful force in American life. In Class Matters, a team of New York Times reporters explores the ways in which class—defined as a combination of income, education, wealth, and occupation—influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity. We meet individuals in Kentucky and Chicago who have used education to lift themselves out of poverty and others in Virginia and Washington whose lack of education holds them back. We meet an upper-middle-class family in Georgia who moves to a different town every few years, and the newly rich in Nantucket whose mega-mansions have driven out the longstanding residents. And we see how class disparities manifest themselves at the doctor's office and at the marriage altar. For anyone concerned about the future of the American dream, Class Matters is truly essential reading. "Class Matters is a beautifully reported, deeply disturbing, portrait of a society bent out of shape by harsh inequalities. Read it and see how you fit into the problem or—better yet—the solution!"—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch

What's Class Got to Do with It?

Author: Michael Zweig
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801488993
Category : Social classes
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Across the great divide : crossing classes and clashing cultures -- Barbara Jensen.

The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality

Author: Dennis L. Gilbert
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1506345980
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
With the latest data on income, wealth, earnings, and residential segregation by income, The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality, Tenth Edition describes a consistent pattern of growing inequality in the United States since the early 1970s. Focusing on the socioeconomic core of the American class system, author Dennis L. Gilbert examines how changes in the economy, family life, globalization, and politics are contributing to increasing class inequality. New to this Edition “The Class Basis of Trump's Victory” looks at why for the first time since before the 1932 election, the Republican presidential candidate won a greater proportion of the working class vote than the Democratic opponent. Addresses the role of technology and other factors in the decline of manufacturing employment and how the trend is crucial for understanding growing inequality and changes in working class family life. Offers international comparisons to show how the U.S. compares with other wealthy nations on social mobility and poverty, and questions our conception of the U.S. as a uniquely open society.

Dream Hoarders

Author: Richard V. Reeves
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815735499
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America. In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else. The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child. Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it. Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.

Class in American Society

Author: Reissman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description

The American Middle Class

Author: Lawrence R Samuel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134624751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The middle class is often viewed as the heart of American society, the key to the country’s democracy and prosperity. Most Americans believe they belong to this group, and few politicians can hope to be elected without promising to serve the middle class. Yet today the American middle class is increasingly seen as under threat. In The American Middle Class: A Cultural History, Lawrence R. Samuel charts the rise and fall of this most definitive American population, from its triumphant emergence in the post-World War II years to the struggles of the present day. Between the 1920s and the 1950s, powerful economic, social, and political factors worked together in the U.S. to forge what many historians consider to be the first genuine mass middle class in history. But from the cultural convulsions of the 1960s, to the 'stagflation' of the 1970s, to Reaganomics in the 1980s, this segment of the population has been under severe stress. Drawing on a rich array of voices from the past half-century, The American Middle Class explores how the middle class, and ideas about it, have changed over time, including the distinct story of the black middle class. Placing the current crisis of the middle class in historical perspective, Samuel shows how the roots of middle-class troubles reach back to the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. The American Middle Class takes a long look at how the middle class has been winnowed away and reveals how, even in the face of this erosion, the image of the enduring middle class remains the heart and soul of the United States.

The New Class Society

Author: Earl Wysong
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442205296
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
The New Class Society introduces students to the sociology of class structure and inequalities as it asks whether or not the American dream has faded. The fourth edition of this powerful book demonstrates how and why class inequalities in the United States have been widened, hardened, and become more entrenched than ever. The fourth edition has been extensively revised and reorganized throughout, including a new introduction that offers an overview of key themes and shorter chapters that cover a wider range of topics. New material for the fourth edition includes a discussion of "The Great Recession" and its ongoing impact, the demise of the middle class, rising costs of college and increasing student debt, the role of electronic media in shaping people's perceptions of class, and more.