#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • “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.
NAMED THE #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People • The Washington Post • Publishers Weekly AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Bloomberg • Christian Science Monitor • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Fortune • Smithsonian Magazine • Marie Claire • Town & Country • Slate • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters
Winner of the Los Angeles Times
Book Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • PEN/John
Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book
Award Longlist
“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 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 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.
Beautifully written, 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.