Deer Hunting with Jesus

Years before Hillbilly Elegy and White Trash, a raucous, truth-telling look at the white working poor — and why they have learned to hate liberalism. What it adds up to, he asserts, is an unacknowledged class war. 

By turns 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.”

Deer Hunting with Jesus is Joe Bageant’s report on what he learned when he moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia. Like countless American small towns, it is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. Two in five of the people in his old neighborhood do not have high school diplomas or health care. Alcohol, overeating, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape. 

He writes of: • His childhood friends who work at factory jobs that are constantly on the verge of being outsourced • The mortgage and credit card rackets that saddle the working poor with debt • The ubiquitous gun culture—and why the left doesn’ t get it • Scots Irish culture and how it played out in the young life of Lynddie England

Author Biography

Joe Bageant wrote an online column that 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. He worked as a senior editor for the Primedia History Magazine Group before moving to Belize, where he wrote and sponsored a small development project with the Black Carib families of Hopkins Village. Bageant’s other books include: Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir and Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: The Best of Joe Bageant, a collection of essays published posthumously.