Deer Hunting with Jesus

Years before Hillbilly Elegy and White Trash a raucous truth-telling look at the white working poor -- and why they have learned to hate liberalism. What it adds up to he asserts is an unacknowledged class war. . By turns tender incendiary and seriously funny this book is a call to arms for fellow progressives with little real understanding of the great beery NASCAR-loving church-going gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbucks.. Deer Hunting with Jesus is Joe Bageant’s report on what he learned when he moved back to his hometown of Winchester Virginia. Like countless American small towns it is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. Two in five of the people in his old neighborhood do not have high school diplomas or health care. Alcohol overeating and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape. . He writes of:. • His childhood friends who work at factory jobs that are constantly on the verge of being outsourced • The mortgage and credit card rackets that saddle the working poor with debt • The ubiquitous gun culture—and why the left doesn’ t get it • Scots Irish culture and how it played out in the young life of Lynddie England