Introduction: Fables we forget by

Taking out the trash: Waste people in the New World

John Locke's Lubberland: The settlements of Carolina and Georgia

Benjamin Franklin's American breed: The demographics of mediocrity

Thomas Jefferson's rubbish: A curious topography of class

Andrew Jackson's cracker country: The squatter as common man

Pedigree and poor white trash: Bad blood, half-breeds and clay-eaters

Cowards, poltroons, and mudsills: Civil war as class warfare

Thoroughbreds and scalawags: Bloodlines and bastard stock in the age of eugenics

Forgotten men and poor folk: Downward mobility and the Great Depression

The cult of the country boy: Elvis Presley, Andy Griffith, and LBJ's Great Society

Redneck roots: Deliverance, Billy Beer, and Tammy Faye

Outing Rednecks: Slumming, Slick Willie, and Sarah Palin

America's strange breed: The long legacy of white trash.