Nancy Isenberg's massively researched and endnoted text wants to remind Americans that our idea of a classless nation is a myth, and a cruel one. From the earliest colonial period our country has been home to men and women who have been called, at various times, offscourings, clay-eaters, lubbers, and mudsills along with more familiar epithets. The commercially-interested settlement companies saw these waste humans as cheap labor and barriers against Native American violence, but not as people deserving of decent land, rights, or respect. (And speaking of Native Americans, it is not Isenberg's purpose to minimize the destruction of Native peoples or the suffering of African Americans; rather, I believe she is trying to show how the subjugation of a substantial portion of the white population worsened conditions for all and maximized opportunities for exploitation by the very few.)
The early chapters on the colonial period through the Civil War were a blizzard of information, all of it interesting but some of it a bit undigested. I found myself wishing that she were connecting a few more dots. The latter portion, from Reconstruction, to the War on Poverty, to today, were terrific. Her analyses of Elvis, Bill Clinton, Honey Boo Boo, and Sarah Palin, and what each of these (and many others) mean to our culture was great reading.
There is something here to offend almost everyone. I admire her courageous writing; I was only offended that she did not include a bibliography. Yikes!
