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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents - Wikipedia

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents - Wikipedia

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Cover image
Cover image, based on a photo by Bruce Davidson at Magnum Photos[1]
AuthorIsabel Wilkerson
Audio read byRobin Miles
Cover artistGreg Mollica (based on photo by Bruce Davidson)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherRandom House (US)
Allen Lane (UK)
Publication date
4 August 2020
Media type
  • Print
  • digital
  • audiobook
Pages496
Awards
ISBN978-0-593-23025-1
OCLC1147928120
305.5122
LC ClassHT725.U6
All identifiers refer to the hardcover edition unless otherwise noted

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is a nonfiction book by the American journalist Isabel Wilkerson, published in August 2020 by Random House. The book describes racism in the United States as an aspect of a caste system – a society-wide system of social stratification characterized by notions such as hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, and purity. Wilkerson does so by comparing aspects of the experience of American people of color to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany, and she explores the impact of caste on societies shaped by them, and their people.

Caste, which followed Wilkerson's 2010 book The Warmth of Other Suns, was met with critical acclaim and commercial success. It won or was nominated for several awards, and was featured prominently on nonfiction bestsellers lists and year-end best-books lists.

Contents[edit]

Pillars of caste[edit]

In Caste, Wilkerson identifies eight "pillars of caste", or features of caste systems in various societies:[4]

  • Divine will: the belief that social stratification is beyond human control, either divinely ordained or a natural law, as in the biblical story of the curse of Ham that was used to justify Black inferiority in the U.S.
  • Heritability: the belief that social status is acquired at birth and immutable, as codified e.g. in the U.S. "one-drop rule" that determined Black ancestry
  • Endogamy: the prohibition of sex and marriage between castes, as in the former U.S. anti-miscegenation laws
  • Purity and pollution: the belief that the dominant caste is "pure" and must be protected against pollution by the inferior castes, as shown in the segregation of facilities for bathing, eating, education, etc. in the U.S. Jim Crow era
  • Occupational hierarchy: the reservation of the more desirable occupations for the superior castes, as enshrined in U.S. Jim Crow laws that restricted Black people to farm or domestic work
  • Dehumanization and stigma: the denial of individuality and human dignity of lower-caste individuals, as through the various arbitrary punishments and restrictions to which enslaved and free Black people were subject to in the U.S., down to racist carnival games.
  • Terror and cruelty: as means of enforcement of the caste system and control of lower-caste people, as through the whippings of slaves or the lynchings of Black people in the U.S.
  • Inherent superiority and inferiority: of castes: the belief that people of one caste are inherently superior to those of other castes, expressed e.g. in restrictions on clothing or displays of status by lower-caste people (such as driving a car).

Wilkerson illustrates these pillars through examples from three caste systems: those of India, Nazi Germany and the United States.

Aspects and consequences of caste[edit]

She goes on to describe the "tentacles of caste": the various ways in which a caste system society permeates the workings of a society infected by it. These include the anxious efforts of upper-caste people to retain their superior social status even while their economic status crumbles (hence the "necessity of a bottom rung", or the perceived need to prevent lower-caste success), unconscious biases embedded in a society's culture that perpetuate the caste system, or the function of lower-caste people as scapegoats.[5] In her view, the caste framework also helps explain the participation of lower-caste people (Jewish kapos, Black police officers) in the oppression of their fellow caste members: caste systems self-perpetuate by rewarding those lower-caste people who comply with the system, thereby keeping the lower castes divided.[6]

Wilkerson continues by describing the "consequences of caste", which degrade people of all castes. Among them are the "narcissism of caste", which makes culture revolve around and idealize the dominant caste, or the Stockholm syndrome that serves as a survival mechanism for lower-caste people but helps keep them captive, or the physiological stress experienced by lower-caste people that reduces their life expectancy.[7] She addresses the mechanisms of backlash against attempts to transcend the caste system, as exemplified by the first lower-caste U.S. president being succeeded by one intent on reinforcing the system, and the importance of the "symbols of caste", such as swastikas or Confederate flags, to the perpetuation of the system.[8] She concludes that societies in the grip of a caste system pay a harsh price for it: the distrust between castes translates into brutal criminal justice systems, and minimal or dysfunctional public health or social welfare systems – and as a result, a reduction in welfare for all but the most affluent, compared to other societies. In Wilkerson's view, the comparatively poor performance of the U.S. in the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the high rate at which it impacts lower-caste Americans, are one example of such effects.[9]

Finally, Wilkerson asks whether a "world without caste [that] would set everyone free" can exist. She concludes that it is possible – as in the dismantlement of Nazism after World War II – but that it requires both the bravery of individuals and an enormous effort of collective will especially by the dominant caste, given how deeply caste systems, like a chronic disease, are embedded in and shape societies.[10]

Race and caste[edit]

Wilkerson argues that the social constructs of race and caste are not synonyms, but that they "can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other. Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin."[11]

Film adaptation[edit]

In October 2020, Netflix announced that it would produce a film adaptation of the book to be titled Caste and directed by Ava DuVernay.[12]

Reception[edit]

According to the review aggregator Book Marks and its parent organization, Literary Hub, the book has received critical acclaim.[13][14] Having analyzed 35 reviews of the book using their four-tier rating system, categorizing 21 as "rave", 4 as "positive", 9 as "mixed", and 1 as "pan", Literary Hub named it number one of "The Best Reviewed Nonfiction of 2020".[14] The only negative ("pan") review recorded by the site came from Tunku Varadarajan[15] writing for The Wall Street Journal.[16] The book received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly,[17] The Library Journal,[18] Kirkus,[19] and Booklist,[20] and was also reviewed by Kwame Anthony Appiah,[21] Dwight Garner,[11] Gillian Tett,[22] Fatima Bhutto,[23] Kenneth W. Mack,[24] Sunil Khilnani,[25] Gaiutra Bahadur,[26] Emily Bernard,[27] Lauren Michele Jackson,[28] Carlo Wolff,[29] Colin Grant,[30] Mihir Bose,[31] Matthew Syed,[32] and Yashica Dutt,[33] among others.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, for the cover story of The New York Times Book Review in August 2020, wrote that the book is "elegant and persuasive" and that it "is at once beautifully written and painful to read."[21] Dwight Garner, in The New York Times, described Caste as "an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."[11] Publishers Weekly called Caste a "powerful and extraordinarily timely social history" in its starred review of the book.[17] The Chicago Tribune wrote that Caste was "among the year's best" books, while The Washington Post called the epilogue "a prayer for a country in pain, offering new directions through prophetic language".[34][35]

Tunku Varadarajan gave the book a mixed review, writing that Wilkerson "never offers a convincing argument for why American history and society are better examined through the lens of caste than of race" and "scarcely acknowledges that modern America has made vast strides to address racism."[15] Time magazine called the book a "transformative new framework through which to understand identity and injustice in America."[36] The New York Journal of Books commended Wilkerson's body of work, writing, "Caste draws heavily on the powerful mingling of narrative, research, and visionary, sweeping insight that made Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns the definitive contemporary study of African Americans' twentieth-century Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to northern, midwestern, and western cities. It deepens the resonance of that book (a seemingly impossible feat) by digging more explicitly into the pervasive racial hierarchy that transcends region and time."[37]

Oprah Winfrey, after choosing the book for her 2020 Summer/Fall book club selection, said: "Of all the books I've chosen for book club over the decades, there isn't another that is more essential a read than this one."[38] The book was also listed as one of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2020.[39]

Awards and honors[edit]

Caste's honors include the 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for History & Biography[2] and the AudioFile Earphones Award for the audiobook edition in 2020.[3] The book was a finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize[40] and was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction,[41] the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award,[42] and the 2021 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction.[42] In December 2020, Literary Hub analyzed 41 year-end best-books lists and reported that the book was among the most recommended of the year, making fifteen of the analyzed lists.[43] The lists include Time, who placed Caste at the top of its list of the 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020, calling it an "electrifying work that reframes injustice and inequity in the U.S."[44]

YearAwardCategoryResultRef(s)
2020Goodreads Choice AwardHistory & BiographyWon[2]
AudioFile Earphones AwardsWon[3]
National Book AwardNonfictionNominated (longlist)[41]
Kirkus PrizeNonfictionNominated (finalist)[40]
Los Angeles Times Book PrizeCurrent InterestWon[45]
2021PEN/Jean Stein Book AwardN/ANominated (longlist)[42]
PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith AwardNonfictionNominated (longlist)[42]

Release details[edit]

The book became a number one New York Times nonfiction best-seller in early November 2020[46] and, as of the January 10, 2021 issue, has spent 21 weeks on the combined nonfiction best sellers list.[47] It is also a USA Today Best Seller, having debuted on August 13, 2020, the book peaked at number three and has spent 21 weeks on the list as of January 5, 2021.[48] According to Publishers Weekly, the book had sold over half a million copies by the close of 2020.[49]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "The 13 Best Book Covers of August". Literary Hub. 2020-08-28. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c Williams, Sydney (8 December 2020). "Goodreads Choice Awards 2020: Best 20 books this year". NBC News. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c "Caste by Isabel Wilkerson Read by Robin Miles | Audiobook Review". AudioFile. August 2020. ISSN 1063-0244. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  4. ^ Caste, pp. 99–164
  5. ^ Caste, pp. 171 et seq.
  6. ^ Caste, pp. 238 et seq.
  7. ^ Caste, pp. 263 et seq.
  8. ^ Caste, pp. 311 et seq.
  9. ^ Caste, pp. 353 et seq.
  10. ^ Caste, pp. 361 et seq.
  11. ^ Jump up to:a b c Garner, Dwight (July 31, 2020). "Isabel Wilkerson's 'Caste' Is an 'Instant American Classic' About Our Abiding Sin". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
  12. ^ Jackson, Angelique (14 October 2020). "Ava DuVernay to Write, Direct and Produce 'Caste' Film Adaptation at Netflix". Variety. ISSN 0042-2738. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  13. ^ "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents". Book Marks. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  14. ^ Jump up to:a b "The Best Reviewed Nonfiction of 2020". Literary Hub. 2020-12-16. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  15. ^ Jump up to:a b Varadarajan, Tunku (August 28, 2020). "'Caste' Review: The High Cost of Feeling Superior". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660.
  16. ^ "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents". Book Marks. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  17. ^ Jump up to:a b "Nonfiction book review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents". Publishers Weekly. ISSN 0000-0019.
  18. ^ Sendaula, Stephanie (August 2020). "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents". Library Journal. ISSN 0363-0277. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  19. ^ "Caste". Kirkus Reviews. 15 June 2020. ISSN 1948-7428.
  20. ^ Bush, Vanessa (July 2020). "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by By Isabel Wilkerson". Booklist. ISSN 0006-7385.
  21. ^ Jump up to:a b Appiah, Kwame Anthony (2020-08-04). "What Do America's Racial Problems Have in Common With India and Nazi Germany?". The New York Times Book Review. ISSN 0028-7806. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  22. ^ Tett, Gillian (30 July 2020). "Why we need to talk about caste in America". Financial Times. ISSN 0307-1766. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  23. ^ Bhutto, Fatima (2020-07-30). "Caste by Isabel Wilkerson review – a dark study of violence and power". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  24. ^ Mack, Kenneth W. (31 July 2020). "Running deeper than race: America's caste system". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  25. ^ Khilnani, Sunil (7 August 2020). "Isabel Wilkerson's World-Historical Theory of Race and Caste". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  26. ^ Bahadur, Gaiutra (2020-11-25). "Is America Trapped in a Caste System?". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  27. ^ Bernard, Emily (2020-08-04). ""Caste" Is a Trailblazing, Must-Read Book on the Birth of Inequality". O, The Oprah Magazine. ISSN 1531-3247. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  28. ^ Jackson, Lauren Michele (2020-08-03). "Caste Offers a New Word for Injustice in America, Not a New Way of Thinking". Vulture. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  29. ^ Wolff, Carlo (5 November 2020). "Journalist's dissection of caste systems shines light on racial dynamics in the U.S." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ISSN 1068-624X. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  30. ^ Grant, Colin (30 October 2020). "Caste: The lies that divide us by Isabel Wilkerson book review". Times Literary Supplement. ISSN 0307-661X. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  31. ^ Bose, Mihir (17 October 2020). "Caste: The Lies that Divide Us by Isabel Wilkerson: heartrending but too simplistic". The Irish Times. ISSN 0791-5144. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  32. ^ Syed, Matthew (9 August 2020). "Caste by Isabel Wilkerson review — a country divided by race". The Sunday Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  33. ^ Dutt, Yashica (17 September 2020). "Feeling Like an Outcast". Foreign Policy. ISSN 0015-7228. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  34. ^ Borrelli, Christopher (August 3, 2020). "Isabel Wilkerson's 'Caste' is about the strict lines that keep us apart — lines that are more than race or class". Chicago Tribune. ISSN 1085-6706.
  35. ^ Qureshi, Bilal. "Isabel Wilkerson knows that effective discussions about race require new language. That's where 'Caste' comes in". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  36. ^ Worland, Justin (23 July 2020). "''Racism' Did Not Seem Sufficient.' Author Isabel Wilkerson on the American Caste System". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2020-11-18.
  37. ^ Nathans-Kelly, Steve (August 2020). "a book review by Steve Nathans-Kelly: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents". New York Journal of Books. Retrieved 2020-11-18.
  38. ^ Haber, Leigh (2020-08-05). "Oprah Is Sending 500 Copies of Her New Book Club Pick to CEOs and Leaders". O, The Oprah Magazine. ISSN 1531-3247. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  39. ^ Simret, Aklilu (18 December 2020). "Barack Obama lists his favorite books of 2020". CNN. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  40. ^ Jump up to:a b "Raven Leilani's debut novel 'Luster' wins $50,000 Kirkus prize". USA Today. 6 November 2020. ISSN 0734-7456. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  41. ^ Jump up to:a b "National Book Awards 2020". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2020-11-18.
  42. ^ Jump up to:a b c d "Announcing the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards Longlists". PEN America. 2020-12-22. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  43. ^ Temple, Emily (2020-12-15). "The Ultimate Best Books of 2020 List". Literary Hub. Archived from the original on 2020-12-15. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  44. ^ "The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2020-11-23.
  45. ^ Pineda, Dorany (2021-04-17). "Winners of the 2020 L.A. Times Book Prizes announced". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2021-04-17. Retrieved 2021-04-17.
  46. ^ "Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction - Best Sellers". The New York Times Book Review. November 1, 2020. ISSN 0028-7806. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  47. ^ "Hardcover Nonfiction Books - Best Sellers - Books - The New York Times". The New York Times Book Review. 10 January 2021. ISSN 0028-7806. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  48. ^ "Caste". USA Today. Retrieved 2021-01-05.
  49. ^ "Hardcover Frontlist Nonfiction". Publishers Weekly. 4 January 2021. ISSN 0000-0019. Retrieved 2021-01-05.

External links[edit]


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Caste (Oprah's Book Club): The Origins of Our Discontents Hardcover – 4 August 2020
by Isabel Wilkerson (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars 39,799 ratings





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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK - "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.

#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award - Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - National Book Award Longlist - National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist - PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist - PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist - Kirkus Prize Finalist

"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, and beautifully written 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 outcasting 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.

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.












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496 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

4 August 2020
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Review
"Magnificent . . . a trailblazing work on the birth of inequality . . . Caste offers a forward-facing vision. Bursting with insight and love, this book may well help save us."--O: The Oprah Magazine

"This book has the reverberating and patriotic slap of the best American prose writing. . . . Wilkerson has written a closely argued book that largely avoids the word 'racism, ' yet stares it down with more humanity and rigor than nearly all but a few books in our literature. . . . It's a book that changes the weather inside a reader."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A surprising and arresting wide-angle reframing . . . Her epilogue feels like a prayer for a country in pain, offering new directions through prophetic language."--Bilal Qureshi, The Washington Post

"A transformative new framework through which to understand identity and injustice in America."--Justin Worland, Time

"Magisterial . . . Her reporting is nimble and her sentences exquisite. But the real power of Caste lies tucked within the stories she strings together like pearls. . . . Caste roams wide and deep, lives and deaths vividly captured, haloed with piercing cultural critique. . . . Caste is a luminous read, bearing its own torch of righteous wrath in a diamond-hard prose that will be admired and studied by future generations of journalists."--Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Brave, clear and shatteringly honest in both approach and delivery . . . Extrapolating Wilkerson's ideas to contemporary America becomes an unsettling exercise that proves how right she is and how profoundly embedded into society the caste system is. . . . Her quest for answers frames everything and acts as the perfect delivery method for every explanation."--Gabino Iglesias, San Francisco Chronicle

"Caste draws heavily on the powerful mingling of narrative, research, and visionary, sweeping insight that made Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns the definitive contemporary study of African Americans' twentieth-century Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to northern, midwestern, and western cities. It deepens the resonance of that book (a seemingly impossible feat) by digging more explicitly into the pervasive racial hierarchy that transcends region and time."--Steve Nathans-Kelly, New York Journal of Books

"Caste will spur readers to think and to feel in equal measure."--Kwame Anthony Appiah, TheNew York Times Book Review

"Wilkerson's book is a powerful, illuminating and heartfelt account of how hierarchy reproduces itself, as well as a call to action for the difficult work of undoing it."--Kenneth W. Mack, The Washington Post

"Should be required reading for generations to come . . . A significant work of social science, journalism, and history, Caste removes the tenuous language of racial animus and replaces it with a sturdier lexicon based on power relationships."--Joshunda Sanders, The Boston Globe

"[Caste] should be at the top of every American's reading list."--Jennifer Day, Chicago Tribune

"An expansive interrogation of racism, institutionalised inequality and injustice . . . This is an American reckoning and so it should be. . . . It is a painfully resonant book and could not have come at a more urgent time."--Fatima Bhutto, The Guardian

"Full of uncovered stories and persuasive writing . . . Opening up a new bank of language in a time of emboldened white supremacism may provide her readers with a new way of thinking and talking about social injustice. . . . A useful reminder to India's many upper-caste cosmopolitans . . . that dreams of resistance are just one part of the shared inheritance of the world's oldest democracy, and the world's largest."--Supriya Nair, Mumbai Mirror

"It is bracing to be reminded with such precision that our country was built through genocide and slavery. But Ms. Wilkerson has also provided a renewed way of understanding America's longest, fiercest trouble in all its complexity. Her book leaves me both grateful and hopeful. I gulped it down."--Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains

"Like Martin Luther King, Jr. before her, Isabel Wilkerson has traveled the world to study the caste system and has returned to show us more clearly than ever before how caste is permanently embedded in the foundation and unseen structural beams of this old house called America. Isabel Wilkerson tells this story in prose that is so beautiful, the only reason to pause your reading is to catch your breath. You cannot understand America today without this book."--Lawrence O'Donnell

"This enthralling exposé deserves a wide and impassioned readership."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Similar to her previous book, the latest by Wilkerson is destined to become a classic, and is urgent, essential reading for all."--Library Journal (starred review)

"This is a brilliant book, well timed in the face of a pandemic and police brutality that cleave along the lines of a caste system."--Booklist (starred review)


About the Author
Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Warmth of Other Suns, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named to Time's 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s and The New York Times Magazine's list of the best nonfiction books of all time. She has taught at Princeton, Emory, and Boston Universities and has lectured at more than two hundred other colleges and universities across the United States and in Europe and Asia.

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Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (4 August 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593230256
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593230251
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.51 x 3.07 x 24.31 cmBest Sellers Rank: 34,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)49 in Sociology of Social Theory
74 in Sociology of Class
507 in Social HistoryCustomer Reviews:
4.8 out of 5 stars 39,799 ratings
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Isabel Wilkerson


Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author the critically acclaimed New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

Her first book, The Warmth of Other Suns, tells the story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities, the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize and was shortlisted for both the Pen-Galbraith Literary Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

WARMTH was named to more than 30 Best of the Year lists, including The New York Times' 10 Best Books of the Year, Amazon's 5 Best Books of the Year and Best of the Year lists in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Economist, among others. In 2019, TIME Magazine named Warmth to its list of the10 best books of the decade.

Her second book, CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents, explores the unrecognized hierarchy in America, its history and its consequences. Caste became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, was the 2020 summer/fall selection for Oprah’s Book Club and was longlisted for the National Book Award. It was named to more best of the year lists than any other work of nonfiction. TIME named it the No. 1 nonfiction book of 2020. Publishers Marketplace named it the book of the year across all genres. In 2021, it was the most borrowed nonfiction library book in the United States, according to Quartz Magazine.

Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer and the first African-American to win for individual reporting. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal for "championing the stories of an unsung history."

She has appeared on national programs such as "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," CBS's "60 Minutes," NBC's "Nightly News," "The PBS News Hour," MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” NPR's "On Being with Krista Tippett," the BBC and others. She has taught at Princeton, Emory and Boston universities and has lectured at more than 200 other colleges and universities across the U.S. and in Europe and Asia.

Follow @isabelwilkerson on Instagram and Twitter. Follow her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/IsabelWilkersonWriter/

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Top reviews from Australia


Cindy
4.0 out of 5 stars The book tells it as is - There’s so much to learnReviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on 10 January 2021
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Great education for anyone who cares to know and learn!

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Belinda
4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking, well researchedReviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on 5 May 2021

Synopsis:
In Caste, Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson makes a bold and compelling argument that an unspoken caste system shaped America as we know it, and that that same caste system continues to define social, political, and educational structures in the US.
The author provides a well researched narrative blended with individual examples and her own personal history to show how this rigid ranking and hierarchy of humans based on skin colour in the US has links to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany.
Through exploration of the impact of caste systems on healthcare, politics, life expectancy and culture (amongst other things), she makes a compelling argument for the dismantling of caste systems for the betterment of mankind.

My thoughts:
This has been on my to be read pile since it's release so I was glad to do a group read with @readingwithcamille to help pull apart some of the themes and discuss ideas.
This book required lots of highlighting of important paragraphs, ideas and quotes which I have subsequently revisited and reflected on.
I found the book to be very well researched and the author's arguments were certainly compelling, particularly in regards to the comparisons in India and Nazi Germany. Reading about slavery and the history in the Jim Crow South was disturbing and not for the faint hearted, but provided context as to how the current systems in the US came to light. I also found the book provided some context as to how and why Donald Trump was elected, and was very nearly re-elected.
It wasn't a 5 star read for me as the individual stories whilst adding emphasis, were not provided with references or discussion about how the information was sourced - as such, for me, they lacked rigour as evidence of her argument and were somewhat distracting in an otherwise well researched and referenced book.



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Brad Smith
1.0 out of 5 stars So bloody boringReviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on 26 January 2021
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Why does everyone love a victim? There is a singular theme of a downtrodden section of society. It has been acknowledged so move on.

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Top reviews from other countries

Lori
1.0 out of 5 stars political bias at it's bestReviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 4 August 2020
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Wow!! I really loved her first book but I cannot say that about Caste. The first chapter is so biased towards the left it's laughable and I'm libertarian. I cannot recommend this book to anyone and if I could give it negative stars I would. How can we mend our country when you only see the speck in someone else's eye and not the log in your own. So sad.

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Kabron
5.0 out of 5 stars Tough Read for SomeReviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 5 August 2020
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Part One, Chapter One will be a tough read for half of the American audience. If this is you, push through - you may learn something.

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David
1.0 out of 5 stars Dangerous SophistryReviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 24 September 2020
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Nobody can dispute that race relations in the US have some distance to go before reaching an acceptable parity. Equally nobody, looking at US history since the civil war, could deny there has been huge progress.

To repeatedly compare the modern US, to Nazi Germany, is not only historical nonsense it is deeply offensive. If the case is being made that black people in the US are treated like Jewish people in Nazi germany, then it must be possible to imagine a Jewish Reichs Chancellor, Jewish people represented throughout the upper echelons of the legal profession and Jewish intellectuals, such as this lady, making a lucrative career of trotting round the world in the 1930’s criticising the German government. That is obscene.

This book’s entire premise is built on quicksand and will only exacerbate the growing racial tension being fomented by critical race theory. Real progress on race relations will be made in boring committee rooms where policy decisions are taken and laws tweaked. Those processes are set back hugely by this kind of grotesque exaggeration, which only increases polarisation.

If you want to understand the philosophy underlying this kind of tripe try Cynical Theory.
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@madmax810
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books on "Caste". Not only for Americans, for Indians too.Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 24 September 2020
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I got to know about this book through social media which invoked a curiosity of mine. So I Pre-ordered it. Contrary to the routine, the kindle edition price was also comparable to hardbound editiom. So reluctantly though, I ordered the hardbound one. The binding, paper quality and the font size, all are really worth of the price. About reading experience, I must say this book is at par. Right from the 1st line, this 400-odd pages book gets over you. The writer has written this book simply keeping the american sociology and psychology at prime focus. While doing this, she has compared it with the racism during Nazi Germany and Caste system in India. Though it is a non-fiction, the writer has intermittently narrated some real stories and experiences in such a manner that the reading never gets dull. From Indian perspective, whatever she has mentioned about Indian caste system, they are pure facts and not exaggeration as some of the users have said in their respective reviews here. That's all for now. I am going to write a detailed review on goodreads.


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Shopaholic
2.0 out of 5 stars Parochial, devoid of originality, pretentious and overstated. Misleading publisher's promotionReviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 14 October 2020
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Readers lead by the publisher's notes to expect a scholarly study of the various forms in which caste divisions appear in societies, and their effects, will not find what they are looking for in this book.
Early in the introductory chapter it is made clear that "Us" in the title means Americans only. In a style irritatingly familiar to others, the author clearly assumes that should be the approach to any form of reportage, without actually stating it. So this book describes only the American caste system, something familiar to educated observers from outside the US of A, but which much of American society has a tradition of denying. There is no mention of the peculiarities of caste in Britain, and the caste conflict of Rwanda and Burundi is mentioned en passant, misrepresented as it usually is as an inter-ethnic conflict.
The author makes attempts at comparison of the American caste system, with its obsession with skin colour and ancestry, with the traditions of India, and the doctrines of the short-lived Nazi regime in Germany. She makes multiple claims to having carried out a volume of research into the subject, recounting her multiple eureka moments, yet at the same time describes how previous writers have made the same comparisons generations ago. This was more than a century in the case of comparison with Indian caste conventions, and of course it is well known that the pseudo-science beloved of the Nazi regime has had a widespread following in the USA long before the world heard of Hitler, and long after his fall. This of course is not limited to the USA.
A verbose, overly decorative and repetitive writing style, with frequent literary digressions, is something of a tradition in American reportage, but to the majority of the anglophone world these things are a pretentious distraction, which frequently disguise superficial content.
One wonders what readership this author is writing for. That she is addressing only her fellow Americans is clear enough, but educated Americans, able to look dispassionately at their society, will be familiar with this material - they have seen and heard it before - , and will likely also be offended and alienated by the extravagant and sententious overstatement. Those wedded to their tradition of denial will reject it. It might be of value to some who are less convinced that caste cannot exist in American society and are open to persuasion that it does and needs to be addressed. The book is of no conceivable interest to anyone outside this very specific demographic. Although such a heavily padded tome is unlikely to be an effective tool for this purpose, it is impossible not to wish her some success in this endeavour, and this is the reason for the second star, which comes with more than a suspicion that that may be over-generous.
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