| List of Illustrations | p. xi |
| Preface | p. xiii |
| Introduction: Fables We Forget By | p. 1 |
| Part I | To Begin the World Anew | |
| Chapter 1 | Taking Out the Trash: Waste People in the New World | p. 17 |
| Chapter 2 | John Locke's Lubberland: The Settlements of Carolina and Georgia | p. 43 |
| Chapter 3 | Benjamin Franklin's American Breed: The Demographics of Mediocrity | p. 64 |
| Chapter 4 | Thomas Jefferson's Rubbish: A Curious Topography of Class | p. 85 |
| Chapter 5 | Andrew Jackson's Cracker Country: The Squatter as Common Man | p. 105 |
| Part II | Degeneration of the American Breed | |
| Chapter 6 | Pedigree and Poor White Trash: Bad Blood, Half-Breeds, and Clay-Eaters | p. 135 |
| Chapter 7 | Cowards, Poltroons, and Mudsills: Civil War as Class Warfare | p. 154 |
| Chapter 8 | Thoroughbreds and Scalawags: Bloodlines and Bastard Stock in the Age of Eugenics | p. 174 |
| Chapter 9 | Forgotten Men and Poor Folk: Downward Mobility and the Great Depression | p. 206 |
| Chapter 10 | The Cult of the Country Boy: Elvis Presley, Andy Griffith, and LBJ's Great Society | p. 231 |
| Part III | The White Trash Makeover | |
| Chapter 11 | Redneck Roots: Deliverance, Billy Beer, and Tammy Faye | p. 269 |
| Chapter 12 | Outing Rednecks: Slumming, Slick Willie, and Sarah Palin | p. 291 |
| Epilogue: America's Strange Breed: The Long Legacy of White Trash | p. 310 |
| Notes | p. 323 |
| Index | p. 447 |