Stolen Pride

Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of Strangers in Their Own Land, asks what economic and cultural loss can do to pride, and what happens when a political appeal tells hard-hit people that their pride has been stolen. Her research led to Pikeville, a Kentucky city at the core of Appalachia, in a congressional district that ranks as the nation's whitest and its second poorest. Coal jobs have gone, poverty runs deep and a lethal drug epidemic has hit the area. Pikeville was politically centrist three decades ago; in 2016, 80 percent of the district backed Trump. Hochschild focuses on blue-collar men and introduces people from trailer parks, roadside diners, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, small churches and the hollers of the hills.

Barack Obama included it among his favorite books of 2024.