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Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War Paperback – June 24, 2008

4.3 out of 5 stars 1,074

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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

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Joe Bageant is a brilliant writer. He evokes working class America like no one else. The account of his revisit to his Virginia roots is sobering, poignant, and instructive."
—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"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 of Reservation Blues

“This fine book sheds a devastating light on Bush & Co.'s notorious 'base,' i.e. America's white working class, whose members have been ravaged by the very party that purports to take their side. Meanwhile, the left has largely turned them out, or even laughed at their predicament. Of their degraded state—and, therefore, ours—Joe Bageant writes like an avenging angel.”
—Mark Crispin Miller, author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Election Reform

"Joe Bageant is the Sartre of Appalachia. His white-hot bourbon-fuelled prose shreds through the lies of our times like a weed-whacker in overdrive.
Deer Hunting with Jesus is a deliciously vicious and wickedly funny chronicle of a thinking man's life in God's own backwoods."
—Jeffrey St. Clair, author of Grand Theft Pentagon and co-editor of CounterPunch

“This recounting of lost lives—of white have-nots in one of our most have-not states—has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad. It is maddening and provocative that the true believers in 'American exceptionalism' and ersatz machismo side with those stepping all over them. Bageant's writing is as lyrical as Nelson Algren's, and if there's a semblance of hope, it's that he catches on with new readers thanks to the alternative media.”
—Studs Terkel

"
Deer Hunting with Jesus is one of those rare books that is colorful, depressing, hilarious, and biting all at the same time. Joe Bageant has given us a glimpse into the vicious class war that is too often ignored or hidden by those happily perpetrating this war."
—David Sirota, author of Hostile Takeover

“Dead serious and damn funny...Bageant writes with the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson, Will Rogers, and Frank Zappa kibitzing over his shoulder...Takes Thomas Frank’s
What’s the Matter With Kansas, to the next level. “
Mother Jones

“Bageant mixes a reporter's keen analysis, a storyteller's color, and a native son's love of his roots in this absorbing dissection of America's working poor...wise, tender, and acerbic."
Booklist

“Mixing folksy populism with the lacerating fury of Hunter S. Thompson, Bageant’s bitingly funny report can at times make Michael Moore seem tame. While Hunting may leave you heartsick, it’s hard to turn away.”
Entertainment Weekly

“Informative, infuriating, terrifying, scintillating...Imagine a cross between Thomas Frank’s
What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Hunter S. Thompson’s booze-and-dope-fueled meditations on Nixon’s political potency, and C. Wright Mills’s understanding of the durability of the power elite.”
The American Prospect

“Hilariously funny, very angry, and somewhat depressing...The one book I read in 2007 that I would like all of you to read.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

About the Author

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.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown; Reprint edition (June 24, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307339378
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307339379
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 0.6 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 1,074

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
1,074 global ratings
Good Vendor, Good Book
5 Stars
Good Vendor, Good Book
Love the packaging. The book is good too. A great counter to Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, which gives too much credit to hicks who have really no redeeming qualities, frankly.
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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2012
I think one of the things I really liked about this book is that the author is a true insider. He came from the town he wrote about, knew the people from childhood to late adulthood, and gained people's trust so that he could tell their stories. He tells these stories with such dignity, so it doesn't read like poverty-porn.

The book gave me a better understanding - as intended - of why people would vote against their own interests. I can see the huge gap that a Democrat would have to cross, in most cases, to appeal to these folks. How is it possible to appeal to both these folks - and Northeast Liberals (like me)? We all want similar things - fairness, equity, the right to pursue happiness without standing on other people's backs to get there.

In particular, I think everyone should have to read the chapter on guns. Now, I'm originally from New Hampshire, where people have guns and frankly there isn't a lot of gun crime either. However, I frequently meet people who feel that guns should be strictly controlled, that guns are used mainly to kill people. This book makes a great argument about guns being a symbol, something passed down in families like a sword might have been in Europe. It also talks about hunting, a valid way to obtain food - far more palatable than raising animals for slaughter in factory farm. It certainly seems like an area where blue-state and red-state could come closer together through mutual understanding.

A surprise bonus to the book was the history lesson on the Scotch-Irish, a heritage I share.

Overall, it is a very sad book, especially reading about people getting screwed by corporations and the healthcare industry (or lack thereof). It would have been easier at times to shut the book and close my eyes and pretend this world doesn't exist, but it does.

The book was written before Obama's presidency, so it was interesting to read the author's predictions for the future. What has happened - and what hasn't. He was right more often than not, particularly about the foreclosures. It would be cool to see an additional chapter or blog entry from the author about his thoughts about the changes in our country since he wrote the book.

My spouse did point out that the book is ONLY about one town, and while there may be many towns like this, there are also many that are NOT like that. We recently had the "99%" Occupy movement in America. So, we know 99% of the people are living life a lot differently than the 1%. But I don't think the whole 99% is like Winchester, VA. In fact, being part of the 99% myself, I know that there are lots of different types of people all over this country. However, without that insider voice and insight, this book couldn't have been nearly as good so I'm glad the author chose to focus in and talk about "his people" rather than Americans in general.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2016
Bageanant acknowledges he “sprang” from the bottom third of America which constitutes the unacknowledged working-class, the conservative, politically misinformed or oblivious and patriotic to their own detriment- the rednecks, the white trash, the Scots Irish, etc. He says alcohol, Jesus, and overeating are the three preferred avenues of escape. (He forgot tobacco products, which are a lucrative commodity for each state, and tattoos.)
Living in a lower economic class town, I see his vision every day. And, the more flags you see in a neighborhood, the more redneck it is.
When you see the Confederate flags, it is time to keep you opinions to yourself.
The author has little good to say about the Rotary and service clubs, the chambers of commerce and Those Who Rule Over Us in general, but he nails down the plight of the working poor, and their skewed logic to a T.
The service clubs and chambers he viewed as enforcement of the status quo.
One of Rubbermaid’s factories is a major, albeit low paying employer in his community, but, after Wal-Mart worked the corporation over, wages fell and many such factories were closed, sent to foreign lands. You see it there. I see it in my little town.
This is nothing new. Just down the road from me, Carrier jobs are at stake. The top union job pays only $17.00 and hour; the company makes money, but other countries offer cheaper production.
All the STEM training our schools offer is meaningless when the jobs vanish.
Workers in his/my hometown spend a huge percentage of their earnings on housing and are about one paycheck away from homelessness. Still, just as in the Hoosier state where 70% of jobs are poverty level, they swallow the Republican line, which Bageant cannot talk any of the residents out of.
Politics is, just as in religion, dangerous, where faith trumps logic every time.
Bageant asserts the grassroots Republican agenda is repulsive, although when forced down their voters’ throats is swallowed with gusto while the liberals chatter among themselves making little attempt to convert the “heathen.” The heathen, he asserts voted for an armed and “moral” America.
Bageant is really mean about the NAFTA paradigm: “The reality is that our economy now consists of driving 250 million vehicles around the suburbs and malls and eating fried chicken. We don’t manufacture much.” (p. 110). The author seems right as rain to me. A house of cards, at least for working folks such as us…
The chapter on home/trailer/modular homes, etc. is both informative and disgusting. Joe views predatory “home” lending high on his evil list.
On guns, he has to say there are more American gun owners than voters, which costs Democrats huge vote losses. “Without a doubt the left would do much better if it stopped yammering about guns and redirected that energy toward fair wages or health care.”
Joe’s brother Mike was a self-taught preacher, pastor to a church of a thousand, who cast out demons. Joe says such Christian fundamentalists make up 25 percent of registered voters. Such congregations are not merely confined to Joe’s neck of the woods, but seem to dot Indiana as well and I am sure this is true in many other states.
You will have to read the chapter “The Covert Kingdom” to scare your socks off.
Scots-Irish are discussed at length. Joe’s opinions are quite interesting at the very least. Health care for the elderly took a terrific flogging. The effects of television finish off this book.
I have given this book a 4 star rather than 5 only because, printed in 2007, it is old. Joe did not realized how far a country could slide to the right in mere nine years. Things change, often not for the better. For instance, the hologram chapter did not discuss the time spent by Americans using hand held electronic devices and that effect upon their conclusions and decisions. Still, the title is a must read!
Joe Bagneant (1946-2011) was an American author and columnist who also appeared as a commentator on radio and television and, of course, maintained a website.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Ian Ward
5.0 out of 5 stars Deerhunting with Jesus
Reviewed in Australia on April 14, 2024
Written by a man who reveals the struggles of everyday Americans. Illuminating.
BtotheS
4.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in Italy on November 10, 2017
A very nice and compelling book . If you like this topic you would love this type of books . The author talks about the topic from a liberal point of view
Sheilah Fea
5.0 out of 5 stars One has to wish them good luck, I believe they will need it
Reviewed in Canada on August 5, 2016
This book has given me some insight to the American way of thinking and processing their political situation. So interesting for those of us who do not live nor understand why the US is reacting to outside and inside influences they are experiencing. One has to wish them good luck, I believe they will need it.
One person found this helpful
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Wisconsin
5.0 out of 5 stars Unterhaltsamer Einblick in die Soziologie der amerikanischen Gesellschaft.
Reviewed in Germany on June 28, 2014
Das Buch wurde auch auf Deutsch veröffentlicht (auch hier bei amazon), ist aber auch in Englisch kurzweilig zu lesen.
Der Autor (Journalist in Ruhestand) beschreibt was von der amerikanischen Gesellschaft / Massenmedien bestritten wird:
es existiert eine sehr ausgeprägte Klassengesellschaft wie man sie nur in England erwarten würde!

Statt des Adels wie in England gibt es hier die Schicht der "Business people" und sonstigen Reichen. Er schreibt aus der Perspektive der "Rednecks" , die Schicht in die er hineingeboren wurde und der er dank eines Stipendiums für das College entfliehen konnte. Er beschreibt seine "Redneck" Kultur liebevoll und nie abfällig, zeigt aber deutlich auf, dass der eklatante Bildungsmangel das Grundübel für Armut und gesundheitliche Probleme ist.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Drôle, finement vu et bien pensé
Reviewed in France on April 12, 2012
Mes interrogations sur le comportement des électeurs français qui votent fidèlement pour des gens qui les trompent sytématiquement de façon éhontée, m'ont conduit a m'interesser à cette excellent analyse d'une aliénéation majeure de la plus grande part de l'électorat américain qui n'apprécie que les surenchères ultraconservatrices, tant au plan de l'économie que des "moeurs". Ces américains comme ces francais sont entretenus dans leurs illusions, très différentes les unes des autres, mais il y a un point commun : on aura du mal à s'en sortir dans le monde réel à partir de raisonnements colectifs fondés sur l'illusion/limite délire.