Well, I have read Joe Bageant's work on counterpunch.org for years and have enjoyed his "gonzo" style journalism. Especially not growing up in the States, I am not that familiar with the Borderers (Scots-Irish) sub-culture of the American South. In fact reading the book evoked Hunter S. Thompson and his article and then subsequent book on the Hells Angels in which he talked about the same group. The sub-culture discussion, though, is just a small part of the book. The majority of the work deals with the author's return to his hometown of Winchester, West Virginia. Its a good mix of anecdotes and statistics woven into a narrative of his childhood and young adulthood experiences with what he sees today. He, for instance, talks about how his own start at a family and a job, that paid well for the time, and how now that same job would require the spouse to work and experience a lot more insecurity. Of course this is my contention that the post-war economic boom in the US was the result of a devastated Europe and Japan and lack of industrialization in the East, but I digress.

The book traces various issues facing the working poor, and primarily the rednecks of our time. Its focused on the white experience, but given the author, that's not a surprise or a criticism. The decline of decent health care in small communities, insecurity surrounding manufacturing jobs, and the strength of the Republican grass roots movement makes for a bleak picture. The author doesn't really offer any solutions just observations and laments. Its like passing a terrible wreck on the freeway, you know it is bad but you slow down to look anyway. The point that the author is attempting to make is that even with the dire straits his subjects appear to be in, they are staunchly Republican and conservative and the Democrats and other progressives have lost the ability to not only speak to Winchester's concerns but to the inhabitants of Winchester itself.