9780593230268_

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OPRAHS BOOK CLUB PICK An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prizewinning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

NAMED THE #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People The Washington Post Publishers Weekly AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review O: The Oprah Magazine NPR Bloomberg Christian Science Monitor New York Post The New York Public Library Fortune Smithsonian Magazine Marie Claire Town & Country Slate Library Journal Kirkus Reviews LibraryReads PopMatters

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist

As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about powerwhich groups have it and which do not.

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences peoples lives and behavior and the nations fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about peopleincluding Martin Luther King, Jr., baseballs Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many othersshe shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

...

Filtros

c5d4a76f-937a-36e5-bd64-f02a7adfce38