Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone
  • Android

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.

Free Shipping for Prime Members | Fast, FREE Shipping with Amazon Prime
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Deer Hunting with Jesus: ... has been added to your Cart
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: Softcover, some wear on edges, corners and cover, pages are clean
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See all 2 images

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

4.3 out of 5 stars 309 customer reviews

See all 14 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Price
New from Used from
Kindle
"Please retry"
Paperback
"Please retry"
$15.90
$6.36 $5.75

Best Books of the Month
Best Books of 2016
Looking for something great to read? Browse our editors' picks for the best books of the year in fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, children's books, and much more.
$15.90 Free Shipping for Prime Members | Fast, FREE Shipping with Amazon Prime In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
click to open popover

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Review

See all Editorial Reviews
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE


Product Details

  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Broadway Books; Reprint edition (June 24, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0307339378
  • ISBN-13: 978-0307339379
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (309 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

By Brian D. Rubendall HALL OF FAME on June 30, 2007
Format: Hardcover
As a progressive who grew up in exactly the kind of town the author describes, I found "Deer Hunting With Jesus" to be a chilling and dead on accurate account of modern day America. Unless you've had the experience of seeing the house you grew up in only 20 years ago boarded up and sold at a HUD auction, or turned into a crack house as my best friend from high school's house recently was (we were solidly middle class by small town standards), you really can't appreciate what the author is trying to describe.

That said, this is no biased political rant, as the author's staunch defense of gun ownership demonstrates. It is instead a desperate warning to all Americans just how perilously close we are to seeing our way of life destroyed by our own misguided collective actions. The author believes that progressives and the white working class (rednecks as he calls them) ought to be able to find political common ground based upon economic interest. He's also realistic enough to realize that it is unlikely to happen in time to rescue America from the precipice we seemed so determined to fling ourselves over.

Be forewarned, it is depressing as hell and in no way conforms to the Republican OR Democratic narratives of what America needs to do to preserve our way of life. It is the kind of truth-telling book that could only be written by someone who has seen enough of living on both sides of the red-blue divide to truly understand what ails this country.

In all, a perfect antidote to what the author calls the "American Hologram" of our mass media culture.
9 Comments 346 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
Format: Hardcover
I am a native of Winchester, VA, Bageant's hometown that is also the focus of this book. It was interesting to read about the dark underbelly of the town in which I grew up. My sense is that Bageant's facts are mostly correct, even though his assessment is quite obviously one-sided.

I give this book a solid five stars and highly recommend it to any reader regardless of their politics. It was a very entertaining read and I found it to be more informative about how the working class lives than either "Nickel and Dimed" or "What's the Matter with Kansas?". Those were good books, but they never escape the "outsider" perspective. The authors of most books on working class America are like scientists looking at some bizarre pathogen through a microscope; Bageant doesn't approach working class people as specimens to be studied, he actually sits down and talks (a lot) and drinks (a whole lot) with them.

The reader should keep in mind Bageant's perspective and remember that Winchester is not all bad. I graduated from the city high school (Handley) in 1996 and it seemed like any student who was reasonably intelligent and hard-working had a good future; however, the problem emerges when you look at where students get such habits - usually from peers and family members. That's why Bageant's description of the culture of the poor is so important regardless of whether or not you agree with his politics (I most emphatically do not). Conservatives and libertarians should find this useful because it exposes why some behave so irresponsibly.

This is by far the best political commentary I have read this year. Highly recommended and a quick and easy (but very intelligent and witty) read.
4 Comments 212 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
Format: Hardcover
This books has moments of sharp-edge humor, but overall it paints a very bleak picture of the working class of our country. Whereas the "average Joe" in his Virginia hometown used to be able to afford his own home and enjoy something akin to the "American dream," Joe Bageant returns 30 years later to find a world bereft of hope...a place populated by folks who relentlessly pursue a dream that they will never see come true.

I find Bageant's points well-taken and convincing, and it did open my eyes up to a few things I had never considered. I recommend it, not for it's sharply humorous thrust, but for the important observations he makes.
Comment 116 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
Format: Hardcover
Let me begin by saying that, as an escapee in 1974 from Red State Indiana to Bluest of Blue New York City where I discovered my own liberal bona fides, I hope every New Yawker, Bostonian, Connecticut Yankee, San Franciscan, Portlander (OR), and Seattlean reads Joe Bageant's DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS. Along with every East and West Coast Democratic Congressman, Senator, and Presidential aspirant. Why? Understanding a different country within our country, developing a modicum of identification or at least empathy, developing and further promoting national policies to address the societal needs of working class America, and (if for no other reason) increasing the chances of re-establishing and maintaining Democratic control of Congress, the White House, and someday the Supreme Court.

Bageant is not some liberal academician who just helicoptered in Margaret Mead-like for a brief, notebook-in-hand stay with the indigenous peoples of Winchester, Virginia. Rather, DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS describes the author's return to live in his hometown after a thirty-year absence in such far-flung left wing havens as Boulder, CO , Eugene, OR, and the Coeur d'Alene (ID) Indian Reservation. What he discovers is a town far different than the one of his boyhood, a place where "average folks" are uneducated, hopelessly parochial and uninformed, terrified of getting sick, and anesthetized by materialism, religious fundamentalism, and eight hours a day of television. They spend most of their lives resentful of "elites" and the rich, but resigned to their lot, all the while living on an economic precipice.
Read more ›
6 Comments 108 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway
This item: Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War

Frequently Bought Together

  • Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
  • +
  • Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
Total price: $32.69
Buy the selected items together