20th century american culture
20th century american society
A01=Nathaniel Deutsch
african american muslim community
americas worst family
Author_Nathaniel Deutsch
Category=JBSR
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
christianity
class differences
class in america
counter history
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
eugenics movement
family
indiana
indianapolis
islam
myths
patriarch
poor white family
poverty
race in america
religion
religion in america
revolutionary war
scapegoat
science
social rebellion
stranger than fiction
the ishmaels
united states of america
urban poor
Product details
- ISBN 9780520255241
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 Jan 2009
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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This book tells the stranger-than-fiction story of how a poor white family from Indiana was scapegoated into prominence as America's 'worst' family by the eugenics movement in the early twentieth century, then 'reinvented' in the 1970s as part of a vanguard of social rebellion. In what becomes a profoundly unsettling counter-history of the United States, Nathaniel Deutsch traces how the Ishmaels, whose patriarch fought in the Revolutionary War, were discovered in the slums of Indianapolis in the 1870s and became a symbol for all that was wrong with the urban poor. The Ishmaels, actually white Christians, were later celebrated in the 1970s as the founders of the country's first African American Muslim community. This bizarre and fascinating saga reveals how class, race, religion, and science have shaped the nation's history and myths.
Nathaniel Deutsch, Professor of Literature and History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is author of The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World (UC Press), among other books.
