Deer Hunting with Jesus

Dispatches from America's Class War

By: Joe Bageant

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

By turns 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."

Deer Hunting with Jesus is Joe Bageant's report on what he learned when he moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia. Like countless American small towns, it is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. Two in five of the people in his old neighborhood do not have high school diplomas or health care. Alcohol, overeating, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape.

He writes of:

- His childhood friends who work at factory jobs that are constantly on the verge of being outsourced

- The mortgage and credit card rackets that saddle the working poor with debt

- The ubiquitous gun culture-and why the left doesn't get it

- Scots Irish culture and how it played out in the young life of Lynddie England

©2007 Joseph L. Bageant (P)2022 Tantor

The volume of information is impressive which made the audio version too hard to absorb.

I did not care for the narrator. I think his voice did capture the veracity of the location.

Still packs a punch over 10 yrs since it was written

Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War is a good book. I laughed I cried. The author’s flowery yet explicit turns of phrase are hilarious. The narrative is mainly a bunch of character sketches from his hometown, with the premise that the American working class/lower middle class are getting drastically poorer and sicker and less economically mobile, but exploring why they continue to vote against against their own interests. They picked a good narrator, so passionate he sounds like he could have written the book. Some good relevant thoughts for Americans today.

Very painful, but important, and still relevant

This was a tough read, but for many in America, a very real reality. If we are to truly change as a society, we need a book like this to have an understanding of how many Americans think, and live on a daily basis.

Just watch a Jerry Springer episode

A wet rag of a story that we intuitively know. Book should have been condensed into a four page chapter.

Lies

this Writer Spreads left wing Bull. is he Robert Riegh Son. I wish I could get my money back and unlisted it