Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War » (Reprint)

Joe Bageant writes an online column (www.joebageant.com) that has made him a cult hero among gonzo-journalism junkies and progressives. He has been interviewed on Air America and comments on America’s long history of religious fundamentalism in the BBC/Owl documentary The Vision: Americans on America. Until recently he worked as a senior editor for the Primedia History Magazine Group. Bageant and his wife recently downsized their lives in America so that Joe could spend half the year in Belize, where he writes and sponsors a small development project with the Black Carib families of Hopkins Village.

From the Hardcover edition.

A raucous, truth-telling look at the white working poor-and why they hate liberalism.

Deer Hunting with Jesus is web columnist Joe Bageant’s report on what he learned when he moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, which-like countless American small towns-is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. By turns brutal, 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."

Rachel Bridgewater - Library Journal

In this trenchant, aggravating, humorous, and heartbreaking book, Bageant, whose blog has a bit of a cult following, uses a combination of political commentary, reporting, and storytelling to explore what he describes as an unacknowledged class war in the United States. Returning after 30 years to the "dirt-poor" neighborhoods of his native Winchester, VA, Bageant examines the lives of the working poor using the stories of his friends and neighbors. Through these bleak tales, he paints a picture of a permanent underclass exploited by the Right and forgotten or even disdained, by the Left. Bageant explores, among other things, gun culture, Christian fundamentalism, predatory mortgage lending, illiteracy, outsourcing, and the decline of the American healthcare system. Written as a wake-up and rallying call for progressives, the work is decidedly partisan. Bageant's writing is witty, bilious, tender, and cruel by turns. Though his style often engages, it also alienates. His perspective is so fresh and his message so important that it is frustrating that many readers may be put off by his approach. The book would have benefited from closer editing; it is a slim volume but could stand to be leaner still. Recommended for collections with a current affairs focus, especially those in public libraries.

Introduction     1
American Serfs: Inside the White Ghetto of the Working Poor     19
Republicans by Default: Redneck Pride and Fear in an Age of Outsourcing     51
The Deep-Fried, Double-Wide Lifestyle: Whatever It Takes, the Mortgage Racket Will Put You Under Your Own Roof     97
Valley of the Gun: Black Powder and Buckskin in Heartland America     117
The Covert Kingdom: They Plead Upon the Blood of Jesus for A Theocratic State     159
The Ballad of Lynddie England: One Foot in Ulster, The Other in Iraq     195
An Authorized Place to Die: The American Health Care System on Life Support     221
American Hologram: The Apocalypse Will Be Televised     247
Acknowledgments     269