Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson

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Isabel Wilkerson paints a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America in this brilliant book, in which she explores how America today and throughout history has been formed by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and real-life stories about real people. 

A powerful caste structure controls people's lives and conduct, as well as the nation's fate, independent of race, class, or other circumstances. Wilkerson investigates eight pillars that underpin caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, shame, and more, by connecting the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany. She explains how the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day by using gripping stories of people like Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his baby son, Wilkerson herself, and many others. 

She argues why the brutal logic of caste needs that there be a bottom rung for those in the centre to measure themselves by; she speaks on the unanticipated health costs of caste, such as depression and life expectancy, as well as the effects of this hierarchy on our society and politics.

Finally, she suggests methods for America to move beyond the artificial and harmful differences that characterise human divisions and toward optimism in our shared humanity.

Photo by: Menla Online 

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is a beautifully written, original, and fascinating account of people and history, as well as a reexamination of what lies beneath the surface of normal lives and of American life today.