Strangers in Their Own Land

A Berkeley sociologist spends five years in Louisiana attending Tea Party meetings, church services, and family gatherings, trying to understand the Great Paradox — why people in one of America's most polluted states vote against environmental regulation, why people who have been hurt by corporate power vote to give corporations more power. She finds not stupidity but a deep story — a narrative about fairness and identity that makes perfect emotional sense even when it contradicts material interest. The most empathetic political book written about the American right in a generation.