Caste (Oprah's Book Club): The Origins of Our Discontents (Unabridged)
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4.3 • 1.6K Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES READERS PICK: 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY • 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 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—now with a new Afterword by the author.
#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, 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 Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award • Dayton Literary Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Finalist • 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.”
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, Isabel 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. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Oprah calls her new book club pick “a game-changing, revolutionary, profound look at how we got where we are in terms of inequality.” And she’s right. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson—best-selling author of The Warmth of Other Suns—takes us on an eye-opening journey as she excavates and reframes history. Her astounding deep dive into racial hierarchy in the United States pulls no punches. Drawing parallels to India and Nazi Germany and blending history, sociology, and powerful stories of lived experience, Wilkerson argues that the U.S. has always operated through a race-based system of caste. Her historical reframing gives us a new language for talking about racism and helps explain what it means to be casteist, or “invested in keeping the hierarchy as it is or content to do nothing to change it.” Wilkerson backs up her assertions with meticulous research, illustrating how caste permeates every aspect of American life: from politics to health outcomes to interpersonal relationships to the ways we learn to be ourselves. And narrator Robin Miles delivers Wilkerson’s powerful words with such grace and authority that if we didn’t know better, we’d assume she was the author. Caste effortlessly makes history personal, because it is. If you only listen to one book about race in the U.S. in your lifetime, let this be it.
Customer Reviews
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
This book will be on my mind for a long time. It has changed the way I think about my country, myself, and my place in the world.
Required Reading
Devastating and necessary. Should be required reading for all Americans. We have a lot of work to do to right the wrongs of the past and avoid repeating them over and over again. Unfortunately, we also have a lot of engrained resistance to overcome. This book is a pragmatic analysis of why we need to be honest, accountable and intentional regarding human equality going forward.
Absolute garbage
Writter hasn't done much research about the origination of caste system and goes by lot's of assumed common knowledge. If you wanna know about caste system and its prevalance, start with vedas. Caste system of course is bad and I denounce it but lots of so called facts presented in this book is wrong.