Nancy Isenberg is a professor of American history whose work delves into the often-overlooked forces and structures shaping American society. Her writing probes beneath the surface of historical narratives to reveal how social hierarchies and ingrained prejudices have influenced the nation's trajectory. Isenberg approaches history with an analytical rigor that challenges established notions and illuminates the complex patterns underlying American identity and its political legacy.
The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
With a focus on the Adams family's enduring legacy, the authors emphasize the importance of principles over political affiliations. Their authoritative narrative provides a clear and engaging overview of the key contributions and values of this influential American family, showcasing how their ideals have shaped history.
In White Trash, Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society and shows how poor whites have been deeply ingrained in the country's history for the past 400 years. They were central to the both the Civil War itself and the rise of the Republican Party, and still today feature in reality TV as entertainment. White trash have always been an integral part of the American identity, and here their history in both culture and politics in explored in depth. A fascinating work that's timely to today's public debate about rich and poor.
In this book, Nancy Isenberg reveals that the wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlements to today's hillbillies. 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 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 Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society; they are now offered up as entertainment in reality TV shows, and the label is applied to celebrities ranging from Dolly Parton to Bill Clinton. 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. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, this text upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society - where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility - and forces a nation to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class