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$7.36The Story
Trucking Country is a social history of longhaul trucking that explores the contentious politics of freemarket capitalism in postWorld War II America. Shane Hamilton paints an eyeopening portrait of the rural highways of the American heartland, and in doing so explains why workingclass populist voters are drawn to conservative politicians who seemingly dont represent their financial interests.Hamilton challenges the popular notion of red state conservatism as a devils bargain between culturally conservative rural workers and economically conservative demagogues in the Republican Party. The roots of rural conservatism, Hamilton demonstrates, took hold long before the culture wars and freemarket fanaticism of the 1990s. As Hamilton shows, truckers helped build an economic order that brought lowpriced consumer goods to a greater number of Americans. They piloted the big rigs that linked Americas factory farms and agribusiness food processors to suburban supermarkets across the country.Trucking Country is the gripping account of truckers whose support of postNew Deal free enterprise was so virulent that it sparked violent highway blockades in the 1970s. Its the story of bandit drivers who inspired country songwriters and Hollywood filmmakers to celebrate the last American cowboy, and of ordinary bluecollar workers who helped make possible the deregulatory policies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and set the stage for WalMart to become Americas most powerful corporation in todays lowprice, lowwage economy.
Description
Trucking Country is a social history of longhaul trucking that explores the contentious politics of freemarket capitalism in postWorld War II America. Shane Hamilton paints an eyeopening portrait of the rural highways of the American heartland, and in doing so explains why workingclass populist voters are drawn to conservative politicians who seemingly dont represent their financial interests.Hamilton challenges the popular notion of red state conservatism as a devils bargain between culturally conservative rural workers and economically conservative demagogues in the Republican Party. The roots of rural conservatism, Hamilton demonstrates, took hold long before the culture wars and freemarket fanaticism of the 1990s. As Hamilton shows, truckers helped build an economic order that brought lowpriced consumer goods to a greater number of Americans. They piloted the big rigs that linked Americas factory farms and agribusiness food processors to suburban supermarkets across the country.Trucking Country is the gripping account of truckers whose support of postNew Deal free enterprise was so virulent that it sparked violent highway blockades in the 1970s. Its the story of bandit drivers who inspired country songwriters and Hollywood filmmakers to celebrate the last American cowboy, and of ordinary bluecollar workers who helped make possible the deregulatory policies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and set the stage for WalMart to become Americas most powerful corporation in todays lowprice, lowwage economy.
