Class Matters · The Strange Career of an American Delusion

A uniquely personal yet deeply informed exploration of the hidden history of class in American life

From the decks of the Mayflower straight through to Donald Trump’s “American carnage,” class has always played a role in American life. In this remarkable work, Steve Fraser twines our nation’s past with his own family’s history, deftly illustrating how class matters precisely because Americans work so hard to pretend it doesn’t.

He examines six signposts of American history—the settlements at Plymouth and Jamestown; the ratification of the Constitution; the Statue of Liberty; the cowboy; the “kitchen debate” between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev; and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—to explore just how pervasively class has shaped our national conversation. With a historian’s intellectual command and a riveting narrative voice, Fraser interweaves these examples with his own past—including his false arrest on charges of planning to blow up the Liberty Bell during the Civil Rights era—to tell a story both urgent and timeless.

"In Fraser's provocative and well-supported view, signs of economic and

social class are everywhere. . . . Even so, writes Fraser, the country

has long labored to deny the very existence of class differences; it is

part of our official ideology. . . . His observations on such matters as

the role of suburbia in advancing the no-class-in-America thesis (the

suburbanites not considering themselves wage slaves 'even though they

did indeed work for wages') are solid. . . . 'The American utopia is a

house divided against itself.' Smart and sometimes snarky; a book to

study up on before taking to the streets to protest things as they

are."--Kirkus Reviews

"Class Matters is a bold and

brilliant account of how the subject of class was expunged from American

consciousness and culture. I finished it with regret, because there

were no more fascinating pages to read, but also with delight, because I

had found someone new to learn from."--Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

"In

vivid, animated prose, Steve Fraser has combined history, economics,

autobiography and home truths. The result is a pleasure to read--an

illuminating, insightful summary of our nation's class

conundrums."--Phillip Lopate

"Class Matters is a fluent and

incisive analysis of where power lies in America. It sets about studying

and debunking myths and replacing them with uncomfortable truths about

poverty and wealth, privilege and inequality. It is written with passion

and wit and a sense of urgency and deep personal engagement."--Colm

Tóibín

"A devastatingly clear analysis of how class and class

conflict suffuse the American present and the American past, despite

vigorous efforts to deny their salience, even their existence. Written

with great elegance and admirable concision, Class Matters offers nothing less than a pathbreaking reconceptualization of the entire American narrative."--Mike Wallace, author of Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919

"A

remarkable inquiry into the nature of class in America: sweeping, yet

intensely personal; erudite, yet written with literary flair; exploring

disparate spheres of American life, yet demonstrating how class

privilege and injury permeate them all. An extraordinary

achievement."--Gary Gerstle, author of Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present

Historian Steve Fraser is the author The Age of Acquiescence: The Life

and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power.