Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War | 
 enlarge | Author: Joe Bageant
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  77 reviews
Sales Rank: 1598
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.4 x 3.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0307339378
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9780307339379
ASIN: 0307339378
Publication Date: June 24, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
A raucous, truth-telling look at the white working poor-and why they hate liberalism.
Deer Hunting with Jesus is web columnist Joe Bageant’s report on what he learned when he moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, which-like countless American small towns-is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. By turns brutal, 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."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 72 more reviews...
 Serious Book Highly Recommended July 2, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Senator Obama may or may not have read this book. It's author does open with the observation that life is so hard among the white poor and working poor that they seek solace in beer, overeating, Jesus, and guns. This is, however, a very serious book, a first-hand deep look into the hearts and minds of the 60% of the country that cannot control its lifestyle, environment, pay check, or future.
Early on I note that the author appears to combine both education and common sense. There are magnificent turns of phrase throughout.
My fly-leaf notes:
+ Parallel world to that of the educated urban liberals
+ Life runs from complete insecurity to looming job insecurity
+ Just over half the poor in the US are white and this is the only group that is growing in number
+ For someone earning $8 an hour, if nothing goes wrong, they have $55 a week for groceries, gas, and incidentals
+ Insurance can cost as much as rent or mortgage
+ One third of working Americans make less than $9 an hour
+ They are inherently anti-union, facts are irrelevant, Christian radio is their primary source of information and viewpoint
+ This is a permanent underclass, two out of five have no high school diploma while all over 50 have major health issues, and low to no credit
+ The leftist middle class does not realize that this group votes right in part out of a feeling of revenge
+ Right owns the bars, the non-Internet real world
+ Left lost the middle when they demonized guns and gun owners--70 million gun owners, 200 million guns, guns are used to protect 60 times more often than they are used to attack
+ Superb multi-page discussion of whitetrashonomics and the trailer mortgage scams
+ Fundamentalists are superbly organized, home schooling leads to select colleges where political indoctrination is part of the deal
+ Sense of Rapture and Left Behind is very real within this group
+ Excellent discussion of how health "non-profits" are a real-estate valuation scam that serve only the well-off and not the poor
+ Television and petroleum have defined us
The author makes it a point to quote and point to a dirty dozen books that he drew on, but overall this is an essay from the heart with a great deal of intellect and a great deal of discipline in the presentation.
I highly recommend this book to both moderate Republicans wondering where their Party went off the rails, and to moderate leftists and to libertarians wondering how best to reconnect to what appears to be a very angry, down-trodden, unheard and unseen majority.
The most compelling insight for me from the author centered on his description of small towns across America, but especially in the South including Virginia, where a network of "elites" controlled the bank, newspaper, city hall, zoning board, and so on. As the author describes it, these fiefdoms and their masters are all too eager to cut deals with corporations and make money off the resulting land transactions, while not spending money on education, localized health care, or anything that might elevate the "local poor" to a point where they might understand the value of unions or tenant boards.
I experienced one major personal insight in reading this: the author takes great care to point out that most members of this group do not read, period. No books, no newspapers, barely use the Internet (except for NASCAR) and--this is the insight--have great disdain for those of us who have the "luxury" of sitting around and reading (not real work, that). This book and this author really communicated to me how little value my education and reading has in this context--what is needed is a long-term hands-on strategy for educating all the people all the time, and that is something neither the Democrats nor the Republicans appear willing to fight for, which is sad, since Thomas Jefferson said so clearly that a Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.
Other books I recommend (and have reviewed):
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
Left Hand of God, The: Healing America's Political and Spiritual Crisis
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
DVD (links poverty and military recruitment):
Why We Fight
heartfelt description of a misunderstand tribe June 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting with Jesus" is a heartfelt description of our misunderstand southern families. For anyone who has grown up eating "government cheese" in a sweltering mobile home, the characters in Bageant's book will be like kin. For anyone who has wondered, "how do Americans actually vote for George Bush?", Bageant's book will bring some understanding.
You could imagine that a book titled "Deer Hunting with Jesus" would be ridiculing the rednecks of our country. When you read, though, you realize that the author is trying to make sense of some tragedies. For example, the first of Bageant's chapters is titled "American Serfs." There Bageant reviews very personal accounts of a failing education system, high medical costs, and the wall of strong class barriers. The working poor who struggle under this system have very few true opportunities and Bageant does a good job of personalizing this story.
In another chapter entitled "Valley of the Gun," the author discusses the deep emotional attachment that rural Americans have with their guns. He doesn't mock. He tells profound stories of fathers teaching their sons to hunt and of rural people who fear being stripped of their rights to protect themselves against a potentially intrusive government. I was impressed that Bageant was able to give such a nuanced view of such a difficult issue.
Other chapters cover such issues as religious fundamentalism, mortgage systems which entrap the uneducated, and the bellicose ideas the government is able to pour into the heads of high-school dropouts. These are all issues that affect the American heartland, and Bageant seems to speak from his heart in a way that enlightens the reader.
In summary, I much enjoyed the book and I learned much.
Deer Hunting With Jesus June 13, 2008
This book should be required reading for anyone considering moving, migrating, or retiring into the Southeastern United States. Many "transplants" into this area isolate themselves into communities which ostricizes them from ever attempting to familiarize themselves with the locals. Others make feeble attempts but without any basic foundations as this book relates often "give-up" in ignorant frustration.
This book is also an "eye Opener" to and for many of the long time residents in these areas who sometimes ponder their own predicament and those of their families, friends, and neighbors. It can give them an outside insight as to how they view and are viewed by people from other localities. I hope it encourages some to pursue higher academic interests and discover alternatives to hopelessness and despair. Desire for improvement starts from within with a bit of encouragement sometimes from without. Thank You, Don Ward
GOP evangelicals don't get it June 10, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Republican disdain for sexual education other than abstinence only in schools results in a far greater rate of teen pregnancies and teen abortions than in countries where contraception is taught.
Many in the GOP who oppose abortion also oppose sex education; they prefer not to see that sex education, which they oppose, leads to a much lower rate of abortions, which they also oppose.
 Great Affirmation for Radical Socialists, Poor Excuse for Social Commentary June 3, 2008
1 out of 10 found this review helpful
I didn't make it past the first chapter before realizing that this was nothing more than a socialist smear job of the South and its people. Mr. Bageant begins by disclaiming that it's okay to make fun of Southerners because his parents were working poor rednecks -- an argument akin to stating that being a racist bigot is okay because you have black friends. The bulk of the content consists of making lame jokes about how fat and stupid the native Virginians are while throwing in a generous helping of far left propaganda and Bush bashing (didn't that go out of style in 2007?). The author criticizes the ideologies of the South while ignoring the irony that this work is even more saturated with liberal ideology. He points out that the problem with the working poor is that the Republicans are abusing them and that they don't have access to equal education, which is a fallacy. He has completely overlooked the real issues that condemn the working poor to their environment. The reviews quoted on the back cover proclaim it as hilarious and full of biting wit, however the humor consists of nothing more than fat jokes and shallow insults -- you'd find deeper comedy by watching Beavis and Butthead. I was amazed that the word "edumacation" was never thrown in even when the opportunity presented itself halfway through Chapter 1. Obviously Mr. Bageant's superior education and intellect are above me, because I, for one, don't have the stomach to read any further into this tome of knowledge, with its 14 pt font and its "colorful, depressing, hilarious, and biting" commentary. Perhaps I should go get learned and maybe one day I too will be an enlightened savior of the South.
If you'd like to pick up a copy of this book just let me know, I'll happily give you my copy in return for some food stamps and a case of Michelob Light. Move along, there's nothing to see here.
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