Rainbow Pie

by Joe Bageant

Set between 1950 and 1963, this coming-of-age memoir discusses one of America’s most taboo subjects-social class. Combining recollection, accounts, and analysis, this book leans on Maw, Pap, Ony Mae, and other members of this rambunctious Scots–Irish family to chronicle the often-heartbreaking post-war journey of 22 million rural Americans into the cities, where they became the foundation of a permanent white underclass. Telling the stories of the gun-owning, uninsured, underemployed white tribes inhabiting America’s heartlands, this record offers an intimate look at what was lost in the orchestrated post-war shift from an agricultural to an urban consumer society.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Politics, Biography, Sociology, History, Americana

321 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Joe Bageant: Born in rural Virginia. After stint in Navy became anti-war hippie, ran off to the West Coast ... lived in communes, hippie school buses... started writing about holy men, countercultural figures, rock stars and the American scene in 1971 ... lived in Boulder, Colorado until mid 1980s ... 14 years in all ... became a Marxist and a half-assed Buddhist ... Traveled to Central America to write about third World issues...

Moved to the Coeur d'Alene Indian reservation in Idaho, built a cabin, lived without electricity, farmed with horses for seven years ... tended reservation bar (The Bald Eagle Bar), wrote for regional newspapers... generally festered on life in America ... Moved to Moscow, Idaho, worked on third rate newspaper there ... Then moved to Eugene Oregon, worked for an international magazine corporation pushing insecticides and pesticides to farmers worldwide, etc.

Bageant died of cancer in 2011.

Reviews

[Philippe · Rating 4 out of 5]

With this ‚Memoir of Redneck America’ I wanted to read something very much of my beaten path. What a surprise to see that it led me squarely into a familiar thicket. Rainbow Pie is not a sober memoir, but an indignant requiem for a way of life that has altogether vanished … and that some are trying to rekindle today. Joe Bageant was raised in the 1950s in a rural community in the Shenandoah Valley, West Virginia. Life was frugal and devoted to simple duties and community life. It was embedded in an ancient ecology „that blended labour, money and goods to sustain a modest and satisfactory life for all”. Community and economy seamlessly meshed. Neighbors „banded together to make lard and apple butter, put up feed corn, bale hay, thresh wheat, pick apples and plough snow off roads. One neighbor cut hair; another mended shoes. From birth to grave, you needed neighbors and they needed you.” Money didn’t play a key role in people’s lives. You needed some to make do, but in essence this was „an economy whose currency was the human calorie”.

In the space of a few decades, this „real community of shared labour towards the shared good” has given way to a „synthetic, petroleum-based commodity economy”. Bageant considers the loss of the yeoman agrarian tradition a true American tragedy: „We have been paid back for our disregard of that tradition and the uprooting of its souls in surprising and often chilling ways. Creating an underclass of throwaway laborers, and sub-prime mortgage and credit-card debt slaves has its blowback - in the form of inexplicable heartland school shootings, backwoods and trailer-court meth labs, or Timothy McVeigh’s Murrah Center bombing in Tulsa.” In Arendt’s terms: the ‚homo faber’ has been degraded to an ‚animal laborans’: „ignorant, under-educated; given to unhealthy vices such as smoking and alcohol; underpaid; semi-literate; misinformed; given to crude entertainments; (…); disposable as a labor force, quick to violent solutions; easily misled; simple-minded in world view; superstitious; and poor in parenting and social skills.”

This cultural sea change wasn’t an accident. Neither was it an invisible hand that led American society into its current predicament. Bageant argues that the creation of a (white) underclass was carefully orchestrated by the country’s economic and political elites. The whole point being the ready availability of a cheap workforce and docile cannon fodder to fight the corpocracy’s wars. To get there they squeezed the farmers and small businessmen in local communities to death, dismantled unions, rigged the tax system to suit their own needs, and carpet-bombed the American psyche with corporate and state-media imagery. The result is an underclass that doesn’t even realize that their country has been looted. The odds to ever make a decent living and gain some respect have been stacked heavily against them.

I found Rainbow Pie to be a compelling read on several accounts. Bageant’s argument is unabashedly anecdotal but that doesn’t mean that it lacks cogency. This tale of a seemingly irretrievable loss of community resilience makes one sit up and examine one’s own assumptions. It also led me to reconsider my own past. Surprisingly, although I was born a good twenty years later than Joe Bageant, and in a different part of the world (Western Europe), there is a lot in his portrait of an era and a culture that is familiar to me. Bageant’s account helps me to better understand where I’m coming from. Finally there is the author’s authoritative and empathetic voice, dressed up in an attention-grabbing, colorful prose.

Clearly, the rural 1950s was not in all aspects a bed of roses. But Bageant is right to point out that we have lost a sizable amount of social capital (self-sustaining networks) and human capital (survival and mending skills) in our embrace of compulsory consumerism and corporate meritocracy. Recommended reading, and not only for Americans.

[Bill Bridges · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Bageant passed away this year. It’s a terrible loss. Over the years of reading his blog and his first book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, I came to feel that I knew him. I’m sure that’s the case with many of his readers. I wish I’d had a chance to meet him. He was in Winchester (some of the time – he semi-retired to Belize and Mexico), not far from my in-laws. But alas, now he’s gone, and he’s taken his wonderfully frank and insightful voice with him. Luckily for us, he finished a memoir before he left us, one which was published first overseas and only finally made it’s way here, to his homeland, right before he passed. And it’s a damn good book.

As with Deer Hunting with Jesus, Rainbow Pie is full of ruminations on our “classless” society and the hologram of bullshit we live within. It also has touching and wistful reminiscences about his upbringing in rural West Virginia and Winchester, Virginia. A world that is lost to us now, moving farther away in the rear-view mirror every year. Soon, nobody will remember it at all. Unlike life and events in our megalopoli, the rural lifeways of Bageant’s people aren’t well recorded. Sure, some folklorists try to archive some of this stuff away, but who reads it? It can’t inform our lives today if we don’t know about it. Bageant’s memories reminded me of stories I’ve heard about my father’s pre-WWII, Tom Sawyerish upbringing in Mississippi.

This book is a must-read for modern Americans, even those not completely hypnotized by digital media… yet. Bageant’s voice is one we need to hear, and thankfully, he’s such a damn good author that it’s a joy to read even when he’s delivering bad news.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a series of compelling conspiracy theories about why poor white people tend to vote against their own interests and how corporations and the government are perpetually teaming up to screw working class people of all colors intertwined with the author's family history and memories of growing up in rural West Virginia and Virginia. I mostly found it touching and somewhat interesting in that I feel it gave me a deeper understanding of where some of my own family members were coming from. For instance he explains why farmers like those in my grandmother's family didn't like FDR, even though the rest of the country loved him. However, the author's weird insistence on demonstrating his sexism by talking about random women he or his male relatives wanted to bone was pretty off putting.

[Marilyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes our planets align. My reading of this book coincided perfectly with the 2016 presidential election. As I was reading this dramatically eloquent author's memoir of growing up in rural West Virginia as a part of America's white underclass, I was witnessing my country's election results. The book helped me understand what I was seeing firsthand, and the election gave credence to the author's personal story.

[Alaine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't get very far into this one when I came across a racial slur being used as a horse's name. I understand the horse was named in another time and place, but when writing about that in this day and age, you need to have some kind of qualifier. Say it wouldn't be appropriate now. Say something. The guy said nothing. Just threw it in there and kept on writing like it's totally fine. Life is short. I'm over this book.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an Australian born during WWII the USA has loomed large in my life and has had an ever changing cultural influence. I’ve been deeply interested for many years in the differences between our culture and institutions and those of the US. So I tackled this book as a cultural learning exercise and it did not disappoint. It is presented as a memoir and I agree it is, but only in part. The other part is using memoir driven anecdote to address a number of facets of life for, what the author claims are, 60 million poor whites who are on the lower rungs of US ‘prosperity’ and often below the poverty line ( however that’s defined ). He illustrates many of the institutional and cultural influence on these people. He uses the term ‘rednecks’ frequently for this poor white class and he seems happy to claim the title for himself as well.

The memoir takes Joe from his very early life to his teens among his ‘rednecks’ in the 50’s and 60’s. His writing in this part of the narrative is spare but often beautiful, poignant, occasionally humorous, and informative about his family and of the cultural milieu in general. Though he obviously loves his people he is sometimes harshly, possibly justifiably (but what would I know?) critical of them. He rails about ignorance, illiteracy, narrow mindedness and susceptibility to right wing manipulation and so on: he despairs.

The other aspect of the book is a polemic against the specific examples of the exploitation of his people. You could probably guess the list: big business particularly big agri-business, banks, confusingly Obama Care as a ploy by big insurance, and so on. His rage is at times palpable and also somewhat confused and even at times contradictory. He is ultimately resigned and pessimistic that this underprivileged exploited class of people that he has sprung from will ever surmount their conditions. He presumes that they will continue to be used as cheap, disposable, labor fodder or army grunts.

All very depressing if you buy the whole picture he paints, but I don’t. Never the less I found myself agreeing to some extent with many of his attacks on his targets. The author’s conclusions based on his polemical presentation of these and many other issues certainly raised many thought provoking questions for me. I have been motivated to research things like US poverty, gun death rates, US imprisonment rates, and a number of others.

I read most of Steinbeck when I was young and Joe seems to be talking about the same sort of people. Joe is dour compared to Steinbeck, there is humor but not much, he doesn’t see much hope and even prophesies some sort of gun driven insurrection. For an Australian many aspects of US culture are an enigma and though I don’t buy all of what Joe has written it has given me much food for thought and at least an inkling about one strata of US society that, on the few occasions you hear it referred to, are always spoken about in comedic or derogatory terms. Joe speaks about his people with, love, affection, despair and frustration; and I think that’s much to be preferred, appropriately empathetic, and honest.

I liked this book. I don’t know about its accuracy. For instance he provides no support for his assertion that there are 60 million poor whites, and he doesn’t really define them except as anecdote. At times he rants and rails. Never the less I found it thought provoking; more a rough guide to this strata of US society than a sober analysis. I’m still thinking about it and researching a week after finishing it. I happily rate it 4 stars.

[Pep Bonet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Bageant was a pamphleteer. I first came across him while reading an Italian newspaper which talked about his excellent book Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. When he succeeded in having his redneck memoirs (or his memoirs of a redneck) in Australia (God praise USA's freedom of press), I got the need to buy it, even though it has been aging in my bookshelf for quite a while.

Don't expect a measured book, don't search for finesse or for nice arguments. You'll find crude texts, direct jabs at anywhere where it hurts, anger, bitterness, pride of his Southerness (no Dixie, plain South, no Gone with the wind-like owners, poor rural hillbillies, Irish-Scots, fervent Christians).

If you are able to absorb some of the hits (yes, one or another can fall on you), you enjoy his rage, his sense of humour, his confessions of alcohol-abuse, his depressing stories about an old world which has disappeared, and all at week-end driving distance of the DC.

Joe was a socialist who despised the urbanites who control the Democratic party, a radical who wanted unionised work in a place where the legislative works for the corporations, somebody who understood how those working poors have been made to believe that the GOP will save them, while indeed being their outright enemies.

I must admit having moments of doubt while reading it. Too much of a pamphlet, boo. But, o boy, doesn't it make you feel well?

[Mairead · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will begin by saying that I am from Europe and this was my first in-depth insight into Hillbilly culture. I am torn between liking this book and throwing it in the fire at times.

I think he was very progressive in his analysis of American politics. His description of Rednecks at political rallies in 2008 are the type we saw again on our screens in 2016, 'ruddy, overweight working people with neck veins bulging and fists pumping'. They make for good T.V and can be easily led by the political administration.

At times he puts on his academic hat and provides social analysis, citing research to back it up. At other times he makes wild generalizations with nothing to back it up except an angry rant.

In some sections he addresses the Rednecks out there with an important message, but in reality, the rednecks he is describing are not likely to read this book. It is high brow in places and in his minds eye I don't think he was in fact writing to the people he wants to advise.

He looks back at an America before WWII as being 'The Glory Days'. It may have been the glory days if you would grow up to be the patriarch of the family farm, but I doubt women or POC would hold that view. In fact every-time he refers to women, he does so in terms of looks and body parts. 'Titties' 'cute ass'.
Overall, considering Trump, I think he has an important story to tell, so it's 3 stars for Mr Begeant.

[Jesica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the most important books I've ever read. I learned more about class than I didn't know I didn't know. It was truly astonishing to learn about the trajectory of agrarian whites from a non-monetary, communal environment to the urban setting in the 20th century. I learned so much about how these poor whites came to be denigrated as "white trash", their disdain for "education" and why they continue to have so much distrust for so-called liberals and progressives. I NEEDED to read this book - and any educated urban white person needs to, especially anyone who can't understand the rage of red-staters, NRA activists and the like. It is truly tragic how an intact subculture was destroyed by the "green revolution" of industrial agriculture and this book restores some dignity to a class of people who are almost universally reviled and disrespected by the rest of our country. So-called White Trash. An amazing, eye-opening book.

[Naum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Typically, I avoid anything with "memoir" in the title like I would anchovies or pineapple on pizza.

But I originally thought similarly about Bageant's previous Deer Hunting With Jesus which was a fantastic read.

Rainbow Pie, for most of the duration, is also an excellent read. It's mainly centered on Joe's reflections of growing up in rural Virginia 1950s to early 1960s, peppered with perspectives on life has transformed in the region (and the "white underclass") even unto the present age.

It could have had 50 or so pages chopped off, as it seemed to linger on a tad too much in the latter third of the book.

[Sarah]

looking forward to reading this book after this review:

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comment...

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

“This has been my story, my own memoir, with a heavy dose of redneck social commentary,” writes Bageant on his final page (310), and with fondness for the book I put it down.

While reading it, however, I sometimes grew tired of the socialist tangents the author would go off on, his tone too angry, railing against a government and corporate conspiracy against the hard-working little man. Before the industrial revolution of World War II the latter was self-sustaining on his own little piece of land, in what Bageant calls a family-based economy (“farm families and the small communities that served them in a symbiotic relationship,” 92) where one didn’t make money, but made a living (i.e. the food and products one needed); after the 1950s or 60s this gave way to a commodity and consumer-based economy, resulting in a poorly educated underclass and consequent debt, poverty, unemployment. ("that [post world-war II] rural generation, equipped more often than not with less than a high school education, strong backs, and the ability to endure the toil accompanying farm life, were losers in a new race they weren’t equipped for. They lost in the competition for the perceived conveniences of industrial, urban society." 198)

The reason why there isn’t a large uprising, is a lack of insight in one’s own plight: "Heartland America was and still is a strange place, where poor education and purposefully managed information vacuums prevent social understanding. Things, good or bad, just sort of happen to you, and a passivity reigns for working-class people, as if all things larger than their families are beyond their control, so they believe that Jesus, providence, or plain luck govern their fate,” Bageant thinks (145), and observed exceptions to the affluent Middle-Class ideal are often racial, effectively dividing rather than connecting the enormous underclass: “These underclass-challenger versions [of history], usually ethnic or racial, seldom include the fact that they share their underclass status with a legion of whites several times their own combined number. Beyond that, the challenger versions of national memory include the same seeded basis as the accepted version, such as that all white Anglo-Americans have steadily gained in quality of life throughout our history, as they marched arm in arm toward the American Dream of affluence" (265).

Rainbow Pie is, I think, at its best when it's actually a memoir, with family relations in its focus, a description of dropping out of school, or when a teenage Bageant dresses up to ask out the prettiest girl in town ("she lived in a whitewashed stucco house" and "One block and a coat of whitewash was the difference between Grosse Point and Hell's Kitchen" 231), or the shame of his dad when they are unable to afford the $100 remaining after a grant and scholarship, to send his son to an art institute to further develop his son's obvious skills (240). The following social commentary on the lack of means for advancement, as a direct result of these circumstances is cradled much more in Bageant’s memoir style and a much more pleasant read.

On pages 280 and 281 he conveys how his ancestral home, Over Home, burns down, with family heirlooms and large chunks of the family’s history, even if, in Bageant’s own words, its true history had been lost years before: “By 1960, Over Home was over with as a family lifestyle. Year after year of relentless pressure from an escalating transactional-wealth society had eradicated the ancient farm life (275).” Yet to me, the portrayal of the fire is where the Bageant story comes most alive, where he captures the reader, where I become most engaged what is being told.

Another instance is, when he plainly observes how his Grandmother died a diabetic at 63, as did his dad, and "I am diabetic and this week I turned sixty-three" (285). He was to survive the age of 63, but barely: a year after he wrote his ominous words, he would be diagnosed with cancer, and he would die in 2011, before turning 65.

[George Eraclides · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle is 'A Redneck Memoir'. In Australia we use the term 'bogan' for 'redneck' but the pejorative sense is the same. A bunch of people the rest of us (presumably not redneck or bogan) can look down upon from our lofty height. Our moral superiority is a given but...also arrogantly delusional. The late Joe Bageant gives us his story and that of his family, rural southern USA whites from West Virginia. Their way of life changed forever after World War II with the drift to cities and towns, and the coming of consumer wealth (based on easy credit), capitalist triumphalism, and the destruction of old ways of life, leaving behind a lot of anger and resentment (Clinton's 'deplorables'?). The cycle repeats with hefty amounts of raw emotion, including love, hate, the struggle to survive let alone thrive, and a quest for the unvarnished truth. Joe Bageant was a committed socialist who had trouble understanding why so many poor whites did not vote in their own best interests; the unfortunate people of his society did not embrace his politics which would (he believed) make their lives better. It is a conundrum for any American socialist. In this book (see also especially 'Deer Hunting with Jesus') he arrives at an answer which also makes him rediscover what is best about his people and Americans in general. His love is evident. Joe passed away in 2011 and did not see the rise of Trump but I think he would have understood him and his brand of populism in a flash.

[Chris Gleck]

This book was published in 2010, and I bought it this year used from the internet. It is a memoir by the author of Deer Hunting with Jesus that I recently read and loved. I loved this one as well since I love the memoir genre. It also takes place in the eastern panhandle of WV and Winchester, VA which was my motivation for reading Deer Hunting this year. Even though it is a memoir, it also is replete on social/historical/political commentary and analysis that I appreciate. This book is a keeper for me.

[Todd Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rainbow Pie – A Redneck Memoir is what Hillbilly Elegy claimed to be, and ought to have been, but failed “Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a fascinating consideration of class, culture, and the American dream.”

In addition to having thought more deeply and insightfully about the issues, Joe Bageant is also a superior writer. It’s a shame he didn’t have Vance’s publicist (or a better book title).

[Geoff Winston Leghorn Balme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving and essential, a terrific expose and explanation of what it means to be a rural American in our times. Exploitation runs rampant from corporate America right down to entertaining the traditionally independent mountain folk with fear and lies.

And it reveals why these people, most of them in need of financial and medical assistance routinely vote against it.
It’s a difficult story and struggle from one of their kin.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along with Deer Hunting with Jesus a must read (or re-read) in these times. So many lessons about how we could be living (communally and in a community), rather than how we are living (run by corporations and greed).

[narthex barks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful critique of American capitalism masquerading as a memoir. In reading it post 2020 it displays an uncanny prescience in its descriptions of the insidious socioeconomic forces driving the white American underclass deeper and deeper into the mud.

[Trudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very illuminating and realistic memoir of small farmers ekking out a living and surviving, of community and of family ties. A lovely book.

[Marjorie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Julie Moronuki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't a perfect book by any means but every word of it is painfully true.

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your answer to why America's proud working class continually vote against their best interests.

[Mathew Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, finally a book one can truly relate too. A book about white trash and redneck culture. Although, not exactly the kind of culture you might initially think of, such as Nascar, Wrestling, and Deep Fried Twinkie eating contests. This delves deeper into the culture of low income, low class, economic slavery. Bageant gives a well rounded, inside view, of how the 'bottom' rung of the American population has went from backwoods hillbillies to mobile home mortgaging right wingers.

The book starts with Bageant recalling his childhood. It sounded idyllic. He was happy, he had a close extended family, he spent most of his days playing outside, he had plenty of local organic food to eat, a warm house in the winter, and even spent countless hours reading library books. All this took place on a small subsistence farm his family had tilled and nurtured for generations. It was ecologically friendly and sustainable. They were pretty much self sufficient and the things they could not do for themselves, well, with the help of some neighbors it could be done. Hard work and thrifty living were values of the culture...debt was avoided as much as possible. And, old Grandma and Grandpa seem to live healthy, active, valuable lives up into their 80s and beyond. It was a fulfilling life.

Boy, that sounds like a mighty fine life to me.

Apparently, this was a very common way of living eighty, ninety, one hundred years ago. A good chunk of the population lived this way. The redneck way.

Then comes 'development'. After WWII, things start to drastically change. Corporations gain more power, people start flocking to the city for a 'better' life, and rural America changes.

Bageant gives a well thought out theory of how Corporations and the Super-Rich use both the government and the media to exacerbate the rarely talked about classes in society. Rednecks, of course, are the low class. The hopelessly stuck, abused, exploited, disposable, 'cheap labour', that keeps the Rich rich. His book outlines how they have been made to leave the farming life and become a consuming, debt drowning, illiterate, low paid, group of people...all so the Corporations can have someone to sell things to, have cheap labour, and keep getting bigger and bigger.

His arguments, for the most part, made complete sense and made me feel the rage - rage against those terrible Multinationals!

But, what makes this book more than a neo-liberal attack ad is the white trash humour Bageant speckles through this book. The stuff you really want to read. The reason you picked up the book in the first place.

Come on? You see 'redneck memoir' and you expect some book about hunting Deer outta the back of your monster truck while drinking Miller Genuine Drafts, don't you?

Well, there are lots examples of stereotypical 'redneck/white trash' behaviour, but, Joe has a way of putting it all into context. Eg, the whole huntin' thing...and, how close to nature these rednecks really are. How they are stewards to the land and forests where they live, not tree huggers (don't ever imply that). They are practical. If there is no woods, there ain't gonna be no deer to hunt.

By the end of the book I had a new found appreciation for the hardships these rednecks have had to go through and a better understanding of why they behave the way they do. And, if you'll believe the overly repetitive jabs that Joe makes sure to put into every second page - the US is not a classless society. There are a few million rich folk exploiting hundreds of millions of lower class folk. And, the future is looking to get even worse...or, as he ended the book. It will be a natural circle, and we will end up back as hillbilly farmers.

http://bookwormsfeastofbooks.blogspot...

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interestingly enough, it's published in Australia - and not the US, and only learned about it through my Mum in Australia. What struck me most is that he provides the background and insight into a large segment of the US population, that is under-represented in the mainstream media (Honey Boo Boo doesn't count). And to me at least, answers questions like - why do so many people actively (and violently) reject things that ultimately benefit them directly? Why do so many people gravitate to and support politicians and ideas that will indirectly screw them financially. Economic slavery is alive and well and people are choosing it - are they stupid? Joe's answer is no - not stupid - just uneducated.

Joe Bageant is unapologetic and the writing style is strong and at times disagreeable, he doesn't mince words and doesn't provide any references to his statements. He idealizes subsistence farming prior to WWII and it comes across a very rosy view and thought it was interesting that when his father was older and was reflecting back on the best times - it wasn't about the "Over home", it was their life after moving into town.

Joe wouldn't have liked me one bit - being a working female, liberal and worst of all - a member of the middle class. And this came through in his writing and at times found it hard to swallow the misogynistic tenor. The casual dismissal of childhood violence and sex abuse, as being a factor of the time bothered me (and maybe it was).

One fact that rankled me in particular and created a jaundiced perspective for the remaining book (page 221), was his slam on Obamacare and his attributing the ban on negotiating lower drug prices with President Obama. My understanding was that this prohibition was passed into law by the Republican party in 2003 under President Bush (http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA550M...). With Joe not using any references by choice - this type of statement really bothered me as it typifies the type of twisted half truths that he claims to be above.

All said - this is an incredible book and illuminates the struggles of the American under class, and their fundamental role and exploitation in the name of capitalism. I'm telling everyone they should take the time to read this - and the below quote is for me one of the reason's why (again no reference - urgh):

"...50 million Americans who read at a fourth-grade or fifth-grade level. They can be thankful, though, that they are not among the 42 million American adults who read even more poorly. Nearly, one-third of our nation's population is illiterate or barely literate, and cannot read predatory car loans, mortgage documents or credit-card statements. The first to be discarded form the work force, they composed the vanguard and the bulk of property foreclosures and personal bankruptcies."Page 294-295.

[Diana Skelton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The few negative reviews of this book are upset that it's a rant. Yes, it is very much a rant against the forces that polluted the natural environment and tore apart the family-scale agrarian economy where most people didn't need much cash to eat healthy food and take part in the life of a community with strong links between neighbors.

Bageant was furious with the "culture of shame" that led his father to sell off a treasured family heirloom in order to buy him a toy robot for Christmas meaning that "when teachers asked students to stand up and tell their classmates what they'd got for Christmas [...] I wouldn't be embarrassed in answering, for the first time since we'd moved to town. [...] But in a rare instance of getting a material thing I wanted, I could feel that it was at the cost of sacrificing part of my family heritage."

Bageant was just as furious at how a profit motive squandered the American horror at Hiroshima and Nagasaki: "A majority of our parents and grandparents had felt that Americans should give up its nuclear weapons after the war. In 1946, some 54% of Americans thought that the United Nations should control all the world's major weapons. [...] With much assistance from the military-industrial complex, Americans eventually overcame their unreasonable fear of being vaporized or turned into staggering, cancer-ridden mutants. [...] 'Atoms in the Schools' worked. We learned to accept the atom so well that we are now deep into our fifth nuclear war without flinching. Or even noticing. The last five US conflicts have been nuclear through their use of depleted uranium. Ever innovative, the military's happy solution of what to do with our nuclear waste turned out to be the production of millions of little radioactive weapons--the deleted uranium, armor-piercing shells and other ordnance that have made stretches of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yugoslavia horror zones of cancer and birth defects."

His writing is passionate, colorful, and always thought-provoking. His voice will be sorely missed.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ideas are refreshing, because sincere, thought through, and free of cliches, and they are expressed forcefully>
Sometimes with pathos "And as the men assembled on the porch to go hunting, just like on any other Christmas, I saw that my father was carrying a shotgun borrowed from an uncle. Nobody had to tell me wht had happened. I just knew: he'd sold the Harrington & Richardson to buy the toys we'd received...For maybe the first time, I realized the trade-off that was going on between town life and the old life." (p. 177)
Sometimes with anger: "An America that sees itself as a superpower begs from door to door for gas and ammunition money from Indonesian retirement funds and Chinese bankers." (p. 307"
Most commonly with acid humor: "But you won't hear anyone complaining. America doesn't like whiners. A whiner or a cynic is about the worst thing you can be here in the land of gunpoint optimism. Foreigners often remark on the upbeat American personality. I assure them that our American corpocracy has its ways of pistol-whipping or sedating its human assets into the appropriate level of cheerfulness." (p. 70)
The book is not really a memoir, which in some ways is a shame, because the author comes across as a remarkable and thoughtful man. It is a series of essays exploring ways in which America forces the majority of its workers into an underclass as exploited as the Russian serfs and then denies that classes exist. While his thesis is powerfully expressed, it is often badly organized.

[Nancy McMahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting a folksy retelling of rural life. Instead I got what felt like a thesis paper or college lecture. There are a few stories sprinkled throughout, which I enjoyed, but .mostly it was dry.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rural culture has been dying a slow death in our society for a couple of generations. I've seen it first hand in the area where I grew up. It's a long way from Bageant's childhood home. It's flat as a pancake versus Bageant's mountains. But the people aren't all that different. I have a fair amount in common with Bageant. We both grew up with artistic talent. We both write. And we both have a sort of conflicted relationship with our childhood homes, including the sadness of watching them slowly decay.

People have said that this book is Bageant's rant. That's true. It is, in a way. He watched a big part of his life slowly whither and die over his lifetime. If that doesn't make a man rant, I don't know what will. He's a bit too political for me, at times. That being said, Bageant captures better than anyone that I have ever read the tragedy of a system that has taken so much in the name of progress from people who would have been content just to hold on to the little bit that they had.

Those people still exist in rural America. I hope we figure out how to save them before they are extinct altogether.

[David Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very engaging memoir of the displaced subsistence farmers (aka Hillbillies) of Virginia/West Virginia. One fact I learned from this book is that, at the end of WWII, fully 40% of American workers still performed farm labour. Over the following 40 years most of them were forced into industrial work. While the author does a great job of describing how incredibly difficult subsistence farming could be, it also freed them from a need for money as families could feed clothe and shelter themselves. The "lazy" hillbilly stereotype described in all the reviews for Hillbilly Elegy is put to rest here: If you aren't caring for your crop, your livestock or chopping wood, you won't be in any shape to survive the next winter. For eight generations, the Bageant family survived on the land and provided for their families.

I plan to read Hillbilly Elegy when it becomes available from the library, but I think this book may do a better job of explaining how many in the white working class ended up where they have today.

[Mark Hainds · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only reason it took so long to finish; I lost the book and had to buy another one. Thanks a million to a wonderful thinker named Teresa Tolbert who loaned me her copy of Rainbow Pie, thus introducing me to Joe Bageant. The tragedy of all this is that Joe Bageant died just a few years before Teresa's introduction. It would have been a great honor to have met this man, who I intend to expose to a larger audience through my speaking and writing. Rainbow Pie is a first-rate read, that I believe, was published posthumously. Mr. Bageant is one of those rare gems, an eloquent, undaunted, voice for the working class. But unlike another similar author, advocate, and favorite of mine - Janisse Ray, Bageant is profane and rightfully merciless in his exposure of the shortcomings of a bigoted, uneducated, and easily misled rural white America. The man could write. I salute his ghost.