ARLIE RUSSELL HOCHSCHILD at Books Inc. Berkeley

Award-winning author and UC Berkeley professor Arlie Russell Hochschild joins Books Inc. Berkeley for a discussion of her new book Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right!

In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, the National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the “pride paradox” that has given the right’s appeals such resonance

For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we’ve ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel “stolen”.

Hochschild’s research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where the city was reeling: coal jobs had left, crushing poverty persisted, and a deadly drug crisis struck the region. Although Pikeville was in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district’s population voted for Donald Trump. Her brilliant exploration of the town’s response to a white nationalist march in 2017—a rehearsal for the deadly Unite the Right march that would soon take place in Charlottesville, Virginia—takes us deep inside a torn and suffering community.

In Stolen Pride, Hochschild focuses on a group swept up in the shifting political landscape: blue-collar men. In small churches, hillside hollers, roadside diners, trailer parks, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Hochschild introduces us to unforgettable people, and offers an original lens through which to see them and the wider world. In Stolen Pride, Hochschild incisively explores our dangerous times, even as she also points a way forward.

"An insightful, troubling look at political resentments in the forgotten heartland."
—Kirkus Reviews

"[A] piercing . . . impressive and nuanced assessment of a critical factor in American politics."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"What a superb book! If progressives are ever to regain the trust of downwardly mobile white voters powerfully drawn to Trump and the far right, we need to listen deeply to Arlie Hochschild."
—Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect and author of Going Big

"Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pride is a masterpiece of epic proportions. Her account of a small, struggling Appalachian community’s response to a parade of out-of-state white nationalists provides a glimmer of hope for our fragile democracy, even in the face of political polarization, economic inequality, racism, and the nonrational, emotional dimensions of political identity and mobilization. My advice to everyone is: read this book."
—Shaunna L. Scott, associate professor emerita of sociology, University of Kentucky, and former president of the Appalachian Studies Association

"In Stolen Pride, Arlie Russell Hochschild continues her cutting-edge research into forgotten Americans, people who desperately need help but cling to the myth that anyone can make it in America through hard work. Hochschild’s insights are compassionate, illuminating, and deeply moving."
—Robert B. Reich, former secretary of labor and professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley

"In Stolen Pride, the inimitable Arlie Russell Hochschild once again sheds light on an often-overlooked segment of Americans, providing a deeply human exploration of the rituals and emotions that sustain a proud region in precarious times."
—Jennifer Silva, author of We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America

"As with Hochschild’s classic Strangers in Their Own Land, Stolen Pride has a truth and intimacy that delivers to the grateful reader what is rare in today’s political studies: true human understanding. Stolen Pride is a superb book, and in these times, an essential read."
—Mark Danner, author of Stripping Bare the Body and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War

"Arlie Hochschild reveals what liberals miss—that the moral emotions of pride and shame animate the resentment that roils our politics. This is the best book yet on the moral and political psychology of the new right, a masterclass in the art of listening across our cultural and political divides."
—Michael J. Sandel, author of The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?

Arlie Russell Hochschild is the author of many groundbreaking books, including The Second Shift, The Managed Heart, and The Time Bind as well as Strangers in Their Own Land, which became an instant bestseller and was a finalist for a National Book Award, and Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right (both from The New Press). Hochschild is professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, the writer Adam Hochschild.

Host or Publisher Books Inc.