Arlie Russell Hochschild begins Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right with what she calls “the Great Paradox” (21). On the one hand, voters in red states experience the highest rates of pollution. On the other hand, they express the greatest resistance to regulating polluters. To better understand this paradox and the broader divide between the left and the right, Hochschild leaves Berkeley, California to immerse herself in Lake Charles, Louisiana. In this Tea Party stronghold, which ranks forty-ninth out of fifty states in regard to the health of its residents, Hochschild spends five years with the voters who are at the center of this keyhole issue (9). The result is a brilliant and captivating National Book Award finalist that should be required reading for anyone who writes on American politics and culture in the twenty-first century.

While the explanations for the Great Paradox are overdetermined, three stand out. First, the oil and petrochemical industries supply jobs to people who need them. “The general talk around town was that the choice was between the environment and jobs” (51). Even though 85 percent of the permanent jobs in Louisiana do not relate to oil and petrochemicals, these industries are fruitful job creators in the public's imagination (74). Second, Louisianans in Lake Charles believe that the government is too incompetent and beholden to special interests to regulate polluters. As one man puts it, “If you shoot an endangered brown pelican, they'll put you in jail. But if a company kills the brown pelican by poisoning the fish he eats. They let it go” (52). So why give more tax dollars to a bureaucratic institution that proves bothersome and ineffective? Third, those who support the Tea Party are sick of liberal condescension. Remarks such as “a lot of liberal commentators look down on people like me” appear throughout the book (127). Together, these explanations undergird a conservative wave that seeks to reduce the reach of the government and the power of the haughty politicians and pundits who want to see it expand.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of Strangers in Their Own Land is Hochschild's exposition of the “deep story” that permeates the working-class right (135). In this story, you have waited in line for better days as you have “suffered long hours, layoffs, and exposure to dangerous chemicals at work, and received reduced pensions” (136). While you never get to realize the American dream of upward mobility, you see blacks, refugees, people who choose not to work, and overpaid public employees cut ahead of you. The person who waves them to the front – as “your money is running through a liberal sympathy sieve you don't control or agree with” (137) – is the government. Your resentment is compounded by the liberals who pontificate that you are the privileged one because you are white, male, or heterosexual. It is also reinforced by the Fox News commentators who lament these line cutters and the decline of an American culture that once valued nuclear families, the Bible, patriotism, and self-reliance. In this landscape, you feel like a stranger in your own land. As Hochschild concludes, the deep story is not grounded in facts. It is grounded in powerful feelings that are widespread.

Here, we might speculate about the value of Hochschild's magnum opus. In the first instance, her book is a reminder that there is a different way to do politics. At a conjuncture when polarization and aggressive outrage are the norm, her empathetic ear and attention to nuance are a welcome retreat. There is a reason why she and her interviewees remain friends, even though their politics could not be more different. Everyone should aspire to emulate this kind of engagement. In the second instance, her book is a treatise that puts empirical meat on the skeleton of political speculation. In other words, there are a lot of theories for why working-class people on the right think and vote the way they do. This book lets these people tell their own stories in their own words. For those of us who want to better understand the world and change it, Hochschild's latest contribution could not be more relevant.