Outclassed: How the left lost the working class, and how to win them back— Preorder Now!

Praise for Outclassed

"Joan Williams is one of the very few people who has direct lived experience of both the gender and the class divide...This is a book we need, not only the Left but all Americans."

Anne-Marie Slaughter

President and CEO, New America

"Williams is a unicorn. A researcher, policy maker, and visionary, she offers hope for the future."

Eve Rodsky

Author of Fair Play

"[Williams] gives a voice to those who get up every day and do their best."

Mark Cuban

"If you want to understand better what went wrong during the U.S. COVID response, read this book. Progressives abandoned their values—Williams shows how we can do better next time."

Monica Gandhi MD

UCSF Medical School, author of Endemic

A rousing roadmap.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel

The Nation

This effective, well-written and thoroughly researched book asks a simple question: how can middle class liberals and progressives bridge “the diploma divide” separating them from the non-college educated to move the American political needle? Williams mobilizes wisdom, expertise, and impeccable political instinct to show the way and address a pressing need. This is why Outclassed urgently deserves your attention. Now!

Michèle Lamont

Harvard University, author of Seeing Others: How Recognition Works—and How it Can Heal a Divided World

In a sad irony, the left has become blind to the distress that has drawn whites without BA degrees to the politics of the right, Joan Williams argues, in her eye-opening, punchy, highly important new book. This has allowed the Merchant Right to deflect blame for its losses onto the class-blind Brahmin left. Williams lifts off those blinders, and shows a way to uncover cross-class common ground on such issues as race, gay rights, immigration, climate change. If you despair of serious conversation across the political divide, or have never tried it, this is just the book for you.

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Author of Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right

"Bold and intriguing. Williams’ voice is needed now more than ever."

Rep. Ro Khanna

17th district of California

Williams gets it. She makes the effort to understand the legitimate moral concerns of working class and middle class people, many of whom have been moving right-ward in recent years. Williams invites her readers to open their minds and hearts before passing judgment, and especially before designing policies or electoral campaigns. Williams patiently addresses many of the self-serving delusions that keep the college educated "Brahmin left" from understanding their fellow citizens. This book will be a service not only for that elite group, but for anyone who finds it hard to understand what on earth is happening in American politics.

Jonathan Haidt

NYU-Stern School of Business, author of the NYT bestseller The Anxious Generation

The far right manipulates class anger to undercut progressive goals and liberals often inadvertently play into their hands. In Outclassed, Joan C. Williams explains how to reverse that process by bridging the “diploma divide”, while maintaining core progressive values. She offers college-educated Americans insights into how their values reflect their lives and their lives reflect their privilege. With illuminating stories ―from the Portuguese admiral who led that country’s COVID response to the lawyer who led the ACLU’s gay marriage response (and more)― Williams demonstrates how working-class values reflect working-class lives. Then she explains how the far right connects culturally with the working-class, deftly manipulating racism and masculine anxieties to deflect attention from the ways far-right policies produce the economic conditions disadvantaging the working-class. Whether you are a concerned citizen committed to saving democracy or a politician or social justice warrior in need of messaging advice, Outclassed offers concrete guidance on how liberals can forge a multi-racial cross-class coalition capable of delivering on progressive goals.

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Praise for White Working Class

"I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class."

President Joe Biden

"Joan C. Williams has an uncanny knack for striking at the core of complicated issues, first gender and now class. No one should have an excuse for ‘class cluelessness’ after reading this book―and everyone should read it."

Anne-Marie Slaughter

President and CEO, New America

"Joan C. Williams has written an urgently needed Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus for the professional elite and the white working class, only better. Each chapter illuminates a core source of misunderstanding, and together they chart a way to bring the country together without abandoning the values of the minorities in the coalition. Read this highly important book and let’s get to it."

Arlie Russell Hochschild

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

"In this blunt, compelling, tightly argued manifesto, Joan C. Williams sets out to truly understand the white working class, whose raw anger was so evident during the recent presidential race."

Tony Schwartz

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working; CEO, The Energy Project

In 2018, in the middle of the Trump era, Biden — who favors biographies and volumes on comparative religion — became obsessed with...“White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America,” by Joan C. Williams. He carried [it] everywhere, scrawling notes on the pages and pulling out well-worn copies to share passages.