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Real Adriatic Store - Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
Your Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9780307339379
ISBN: 0307339378
Label: Three Rivers Press
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: 2008-06-24
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Release Date: 2008-06-24
Studio: Three Rivers Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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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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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: I amy not be an American
Comment: I'm not an American. I wasn't born there and have never travelled there, although it would be false to say that I wasn't influence by US culture.
I live in Perth, Australia, but I was not born here either. Home for me was Africa, a long time ago.
Today my home is in the West. The Wild West of the USA is continually knocking on the doors of my consciousness, via the action movies and crime shows that find their way onto my TV. Perth, too, is of the "West" - not just in its Westerly and rather detached location in relation to the rest of the more established and oftentimes more sophisticated Eastern states. Here in the Wild West of Perthian consciousness, we follow some of the cruder rules of contemporary capitalism -- a mode of 'survival of the fittest' which is often shrewdly xenophobic in keeping outsiders out, and not a little bit culturally parochial, in the mode of: "We've always done things this way (and you should have known enough to know about it)."
Bageant's book gave me a window on conservative thinking as a form of entrenched intellectual and cultural laziness, which does not understand its own limitations. Such thinking does not even serve the thinker, we could do with being further educated.
I recommend this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An insider's view of a world hidden from American suburbanites
Comment: This tends to wax very partisan Democratic, which isn't my preference, but the author does so well describing the various characters in his small town, you can't help but read this and feel like you've gotten to know these people better- people living outside the heavily corporatized, overprocessed, standardized bland bubble of suburban America. Some of the author's observations are compelling, regardless of one's politics- the chapter on Lyndie England, for example. If you tend to approach politics with a thoughtfulness, and a desire to genuinely understand those who are different or unfamiliar, rather than mindlessly clinging to the "party line" as told by radio talkshow hosts, you will find this to be a very good book, regardless of your political affiliation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Why Rednecks Vote Republican
Comment: Bageant hits a home run in "Deer Hunting With Jesus." Only a skilled expatriate writer returning to his roots in Appalachia could weave a story explaining why dirt poor white folk put their faith in political dogmas that run against their own best economic interests. Partly due to poor education and ignorance, the redneck mindset developed out of the history of persecuted Scotch-Irish immigrants living in mountainous isolation in frontier America. This book is about real people, old friends, whose names and identities have been changed to protect their privacy. It's about the way they think and why.
Rather than despising the way they pooh-pooh evolutionary science and feel sorry for their belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible, Bageant's has you empathizing with these old friends in Winchester, Virginia. Down home jokes have you laughing even guffawing at this take on Americana. Blue-state voters owe it to themselves to read "Deer Hunter With Jesus" just to fathom the reality behind the "red neck state" mentality.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Biggoted and bitter....pure junk, but entertaining
Comment: This book was a joke. Joe is obviously bitter at the world. Having lived in a small town, I can relate to some of his observations, and he should be ashamed of his general review of "his community". He is obviously deeply offended by those that have "made money" in his hometown.
I would not buy this book again...just too much good stuff out there to read. I kept reading the book, though, for I thought he would get to a point, which he never did.
Rednecks, biggots, ignorants, and more of this type may "get a kick" out of this book, but for me, it was a wasted expense.
Sorry, but this is the way I see the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Comment: This was a "must read" before this year's election and now moving forward to get our nation working together, its message is even more critical.
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