Deer Hunting with Jesus
Guns, Votes, Debt and Delusion in Redneck America

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Guns, Votes, Debt and Delusion in Redneck America by Joe Bageant (Paperback) (ISBN: 9781846271526)

'Dead serious and damn funny... Bageant writes with the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson, Will Rogers, and Frank Zappa kibitzing over his shoulder... Takes Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas to the next level.' Mother Jones

'This recounting of lost lives - of white have-nots - has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad.' Studs Terkel

This straight-shooting tour of the taverns, temples, and trailer-parks of white-trash America reveals the God-fearin', harddrinkin' folks who put Clinton and Bush (jnr and snr) in the White House, and who will decide who wins in 2008.

Welcome to Winchester, Virginia: a town populated almost entirely by the undereducated, the over-weight and the dirt-poor. Patsy Cline may have been born here, but she got out pretty fast. For most of the inhabitants, life is a constant, unwinnable scrabble over mortgage repayments, loan debts and healthcare bills, and the only avenues of escape are a tour of duty in Iraq, alcohol, overeating, or God. Joe Bageant knows these people well because he is one of them, and in this riveting journey around the factories, the rifle ranges, the bars and the car lots of his hometown, he shows us how white working-class Americans have been exploited and betrayed by the very people - in Big Business and in government - they put their faith in.

JOE BAGEANT has been writing about culture for magazines and newspapers since the 1970s and his blog www.joebageant.com has made him a cult hero among gonzo-journalism devotees and progressives. He recently returned to live in his hometown, Winchester, VA.

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