Stolen Pride

Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right

In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the “pride paradox” that has given the right’s appeals such resonance

“Arlie Russell Hochschild’s work has never been more timely or more necessary, from the resurgence of interest in emotional labor to [her] deep, empathetic dive into the heart of the Right.” —Sarah Jaffe, author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, on Strangers in Their Own Land

A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year
A 2024 New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Pick

For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we’ve ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel “stolen”?

Hochschild’s research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation, where the city was reeling: coal jobs had left, crushing poverty persisted, and a deadly drug crisis struck the region. Although Pikeville was in the political center thirty years ago, by 2016, 80 percent of the district’s population voted for Donald Trump. Her brilliant exploration of the town’s response to a white nationalist march in 2017—a rehearsal for the deadly Unite the Right march that would soon take place in Charlottesville, Virginia—takes us deep inside a torn and suffering community.

In Stolen Pride, Hochschild focuses on a group swept up in the shifting political landscape: blue-collar men. In small churches, hillside hollers, roadside diners, trailer parks, and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Hochschild introduces us to unforgettable people, and offers an original lens through which to see them and the wider world. In Stolen Pride, Hochschild incisively explores our dangerous times, even as she also points a way forward.

Praise

“As with Hochschild’s classic Strangers in Their Own Land, Stolen Pride has a truth and intimacy that delivers to the grateful reader what is rare in today’s political studies: true human understanding. Stolen Pride is a superb book, and in these times, an essential read.”
—Mark Danner, author of Stripping Bare the Body and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War
“A piercing . . . impressive and nuanced assessment of a critical factor in American politics.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Reflecting on pride and how communities misconstrue or misdirect blame, Hochschild seeks to explain the growth of Trumpism and white nationalism while also opening a window on a brokenhearted community.”
Alta Journal
“Hochschild’s emphasis on unrecognized grief is a necessary corrective.”
Boston Review
Stolen Pride is, at its core, a book about the right-wing turn of the nation. . . . [Hochschild] takes us into a community under intense pressure and reveals the story of that community in a nuanced and graceful way, avoiding heated rhetoric and allowing her subjects to reveal their world with sympathy and understanding.”
The Boston Globe
“[Arlie Russell Hochschild] is a curious and skilled listener. In Stolen Pride, she draws out white nationalists, elected officials, convicted felons and recovering addicts. They tell her about feeling embarrassed and then angry about the way their region is portrayed as the butt of a national joke.”
Financial Times
“What a superb book! If progressives are ever to regain the trust of downwardly mobile white voters powerfully drawn to Trump and the far right, we need to listen deeply to Arlie Hochschild.”
—Robert Kuttner, co-editor of the American Prospect and author of Going Big
“Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pride is a masterpiece of epic proportions. Her account of a small, struggling Appalachian community’s response to a parade of out-of-state white nationalists provides a glimmer of hope for our fragile democracy, even in the face of political polarization, economic inequality, racism, and the nonrational, emotional dimensions of political identity and mobilization. My advice to everyone is: read this book.”
—Shaunna L. Scott, associate professor emerita of sociology, University of Kentucky, and former president of the Appalachian Studies Association
“In Stolen Pride, Arlie Russell Hochschild continues her cutting-edge research into forgotten Americans, people who desperately need help but cling to the myth that anyone can make it in America through hard work. Hochschild’s insights are compassionate, illuminating, and deeply moving.”
—Robert B. Reich, former secretary of labor and professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
“Arlie Hochschild reveals what liberals miss—that the moral emotions of pride and shame animate the resentment that roils our politics. This is the best book yet on the moral and political psychology of the new right, a masterclass in the art of listening across our cultural and political divides.”
—Michael J. Sandel, author of The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?
“An insightful, troubling look at political resentments in the forgotten heartland.”
Kirkus Reviews
“In Stolen Pride, Hochschild locates the heart of Trump’s appeal to rural voters in emotions of pride and shame—including pride in their region’s traditions and shame in what it’s become in an era of declining coal jobs and rising drug addiction.”
Vox
Stolen Pride has an authority earned through seven years of research . . . [achieving] a kaleidoscopic effect. . . . Her compassion is tangible. The most effective of her myriad tools is simply listening to those whose life stories don’t often get heard in the national conversation.”
The New York Times Book Review
“A deeply researched account of the rightward turn in Appalachia.”
The New Yorker
“Hochschild’s new book, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, builds upon insights from her earlier exploration of life in working-class conservative America as well as her copious work on the management of emotions and feelings to tell an even deeper story about the emotional scaffolding of politics.”
The American Prospect
“Sympathetic, fascinating, sometimes funny, and often quite moving. . . . Stolen Pride is a useful and often fascinating contribution to our understanding of ‘the rise of the right’ in rural America.”
The New Republic
“Hochschild is an unfailingly kind interviewer and adept storyteller, and her gallery of arresting characters, from both sides of the political divide, sticks with the reader. . . . One of the year’s most important books.”
CounterPunch
“In Stolen Pride, the inimitable Arlie Russell Hochschild once again sheds light on an often-overlooked segment of Americans, providing a deeply human exploration of the rituals and emotions that sustain a proud region in precarious times.”
—Jennifer Silva, author of We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America

News and Reviews

MSNBC

Watch an interview with Arlie Russell Hocschild about Stolen Pride on MSNBC’s Velshi.

Mother Jones

Read an excerpt from Stolen Pride in Mother Jones.

Publishers Weekly

Read a starred review of Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pride in Publishers Weekly

Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land Named to Short List for National Book Award

The National Book Foundation announced on October 6 that Arlie Hochschild’s 

Books by Arlie Russell Hochschild

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

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Goodreads Reviews