“White Trash“ Historian Nancy Isenberg on J.D. Vance, “Hillbilly Elegy“ & Class in America

Support our work: American historian and the author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, calls Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance a peddler of the “self-made man myth.“ Isenberg criticizes Hilbilly Elegy, the memoir that propelled him to fame, as a deceptive way of selling this myth and the conservative politics it comes with. “Much of what his memoir says tells us nothing about real class conditions,“ Isenberg says, pointing to her own historical and sociological research on the rural poor in the United States. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: