Overview

Rainbow Pie is a coming-of-age memoir wrapped around a discussion of America's most taboo subject -- social class. Set between 1950 and 1963, Joe Bageant uses Maw, Pap, Ony Mae, and other members of his rambunctious Scots-Irish family to chronicle the often-heartbreaking post-war journey of 22 million rural Americans into the cities, where they became the foundation of a permanent white underclass. Combining recollection, stories, accounts, remembrance, and analysis, the book offers an intimate look at what Americans lost in the massive and orchestrated post-war social and economic shift from an agricultural to an urban consumer society. Along the way, he also provides insights into how 'the second and third generation of displaced agrarians', as Gore Vidal described them, now fuel the discontent of America's politically conservative, God-fearing, Obama-hating 'red-staters'. These are the gun-owning, uninsured, underemployed white tribes inhabiting America's urban and suburban heartland: the ones who never got a slice of the pie during the good times, and the ones hit hardest by America's bad times, and who hit back during election years. Their 'tough work and tougher luck' story stretches over generations, and Bageant tells it here with poignancy, indignation, and tinder-dry wit.

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9781921640919

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An amazing read. What Harper Lee had to hide behind fiction to write, Joe Bageant has done straight-up, with all the bones showing. This is a majestic work. --Bob Kincaid, Head-On Radio Network This book is righteous, self-righteous, exhilarating, and aggravating. By God, it's a raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck. As a blue state man with a red state childhood, I have been waiting for this book for years. We ignore its message at our peril. --Sherman Alexie, author, Reservation Blues , on Deer Hunting with Jesus

This book is righteous, self-righteous, exhilarating, and aggravating. By God, it's a raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck. As a blue state man with a red state childhood, I have been waiting for this book for years. We ignore its message at our peril. --Sherman Alexie, author, Reservation Blues , on Deer Hunting with Jesus

Author Information

Joe Bageant is a columnist and political commentator who writes for international newspapers and magazines and has appeared on U.S. national public radio and the BBC. He is the author of Deer Hunting with Jesus, which is being developed as a dramatic television series in America.

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