Strangers in Their Own Land ─ Anger and Mourning on the American Right

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential elections, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what had happened and what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild had spent the preceding five years immersed in the strongly Tea-Party-facing community around Lake Charles, Louisiana. As Jedediah Purdy put it in The New Republic, “Hochschild is fascinated by how people make sense of their lives. . . . [Her] attentive, detailed portraits . . . reveal a gulf between Hochschild’s ‘strangers in their own land’ and a new elite.” The hardcover edition brought Arlie Hocshchild into the public eye as she traveled from community to community to bring her insights to bear on the new election of Donald Trump.

This paperback edition will feature a new introduction by the author reflecting on the election of Donald Trump and the other events that have unfolded both in Louisiana and around the country since the hardcover edition was published, as well as a readers’ guide in the back of the book.