Deer Hunting With Jesus

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a fine, if imperfect, book. Bageant writes from an interesting and somewhat unique, perspective. A child of Virginia's white working class, he details his return after several decades in the bigger world, to the town of his birth, Winchester. What he finds is troubling, to say the least. While he was off becoming a liberal writer, his family and friends were left in near poverty to "cling to guns and religion," as an imprudent politician might put it. Bageant devotes most of the book to this tendency, portraying it as a symptom of the class war he blames on right-wing ideology and left-wing indifference. Where the author goes wrong is in his gonzo, take-no-prisoners style. It may be entertaining to read, but as social science, it's pretty weak. All too often, the book devolves into a series of diatribes against such familiar tropes as the latte-sipping liberal who sees himself as "too good" for Bageant's kin. But that's not to say there isn't value to be found here, particularly in the section on gun control, where Bageant's view that progressives need to drop this non-issue ASAP, may prove instructive.


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