Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature, and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society - where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been near the center of major debates over the character of the American identity.

"Published with a new preface in Penguin Books 2017"--Title page verso.

Introduction : Fables we forget by --Part I : To begin the world anew : Taking out the trash : waste people in the New World -- John Locke's Lubberland : the settlements of Carolina and Georgia -- Benjamin Franklin's American breed : the demographics of mediocrity -- Thomas Jefferson's rubbish : a curious topography of class -- Andrew Jackson's cracker country : the squatter as common man -- Part II : Degeneration of the American Breed : Pedigree and poor white trash : bad blood, half-breeds and clay-eaters -- Cowards, Poltroons, and mudsills : civil war as class warfare -- Thoroughbreds and scalawags : bloodlines and bastard stock in the age of eugenics -- Forgotten men and poor folk : downward mobility and the Great Depression -- The cult of the country boy : Elvis Presley, Andy Griffith, and LBJ's Great Society -- Part III : The white trash makeover : Redneck roots : Deliverance, Billy Beer, and Tammy Faye -- Outing Rednecks : slumming, Slick Willie, and Sarah Palin -- America's strange breed : the long legacy of white trash.