![]() But Isenberg falls prey to one of the most common and pernicious fallacies in American popular discourse about class: For her, America’s landless farmers and precarious workers are by default white. Isenberg makes a strong case that one of the most common ways of stigmatizing poor people was to question their racial identity. In the book’s most ingenious passages, Isenberg offers a catalog of the insulting terms well-off Americans used to denigrate their economic inferiors. Ranging from John Rolfe and Pocahontas to The Beverly Hillbillies, Isenberg provides a cultural history of changing concepts of class and inferiority. ![]() Isenberg’s story is not, as her subtitle suggests, 'untold.' But she retells it with unusual ambition and (to use a class-laden term) in a masterly manner. ![]()
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