#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - OPRAH'S 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 Prize-winning, 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.
**#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York
Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR,
Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York
Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate,
Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews
Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award - Winner of the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize - National Book Award Longlist - 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 - Kirkus Prize Finalist
"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 power--which 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, and beautifully written 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 people's lives and behavior and the nation's 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 people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's
Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself,
and many others--she 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.
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.
