Recommended: White Trash

One of the reasons so many government plans and programs to help the poor are ineffective and largely a waste of money is that most of the (mostly wealthy urban elite) politicians and the experts who advise them have little or no understanding of the cultures they are trying to help. I am well aware of this in my own understanding of these cultures, and have been trying to remedy that failing. One extremely useful book I have recently read is White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg.

Yes, America has classes, despite what we were taught in school.  And class matters, as anyone who is not of "the right class" already knows.   But the nature of class in America is a complicated history, tracing right back to the attitudes of the English toward class in the colonial period, and coming right up to today's successful "white trash" TV programs like Duck Dynasty. This book is long and detailed, and requires persistence to get through, but it is worth the effort.