Published in June of 2017 by Blackstone Audio
Read by Liisa Ivary
Duration: 3 hours, 28 minutes
Unabridged
White Working Class grew from an article that the author wrote after the 2016 Presidential Election. She wrote this article to explain the results to her friends in what she calls the "professional elite". The article created a lot of buzz so she expanded it into a small, accessible book that I found to be very accurate.
Williams distinguishes the working class from the poor and the professional elite. In layman's terms, the working class is the middle class. It consists of factory workers, teachers, police officers, mechanics and restaurant managers. People with training and skills that literally go to work every day. The professional elite are doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, professors at elite universities and the political class.
Williams details why the working class looks at the world differently than the professional elite and why the policies and the general image offered up by the Clinton campaign was so thoroughly rejected by the working class.
As a person who comes from a working class background (one of my grandfathers was a farmer, the other a factory worker for GM, my mother was a teacher and my father repaired appliances. I am a teacher in an urban school), I found this book to be remarkably perceptive. Williams' intent is to introduce the Democratic political elite to the working class and I think she succeeds. Not that I am a fan of the Democrat Party (up until this election, I considered myself a Republican, but now I suppose I am a Republican in exile) but it would be great for the national conversation if both of the major parties actually has an idea who they are talking to.
Tie this book in with J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (about the poor, not the working class) to get a good look at the "deplorables" in America (to quote Hillary Clinton).
This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America by Joan C. Williams.
