num_pages: 496
description: The Pulitzer Prizewinning 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.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 powerwhich 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 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 peoples lives and behavior and the nations 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 peopleincluding Martin Luther King Jr. baseballs Satchel Paige a single father and his toddler son Wilkerson herself and many othersshe 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 out-cast 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.
language: English
title: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
publisher: Random House