While some policy issues come up in these voters’ self-narratives—abortion, gun rights, nafta, the opioid crisis—their sense of cultural betrayal is a stronger common thread. They believe hard work has been devalued in America; that elites belittle people who live outside of urban centers; that once-normal opinions have become taboo. This sense of cultural disorientation and betrayal, of a common sensibility flipped upside-down, is the most powerful take-away from Zito and Todd’s journey through the Midwest. “Religiosity that was once honored by both parties became mocked by one as merely a basis of bigotry,” they write. “Rust Belt voters watched on cable television as the Left and journalists pigeonholed their rebellion as an ugly bout of white nationalism, doubling down on all the elitist snobbery those voters sought to rebuke.”

This is the book’s most defiant argument: “The professional Left focuses heavily on race-related questions in analyzing the Trump vote,” the authors write, capitalizing “Left” like some formal, menacing collective. “But race-tinged subjects were rarely cited by Trump voters interviewed for this book.” Their subjects deeply resent any suggestion that they are bigoted because of who they voted for. “‘Racist.’ Every time someone throws that at me I spit right back out: ‘Let’s see, our daughter that we’ve adopted is biracial. I got two hundred-percent black sons. I’ve got a half-Japanese grandson, a biracial daughter-in-law, and a daughter-in-law that is half Puerto Rican and half Mexican,” one woman says. “You have no idea who you’re talking to. My family is, well, we are like a rainbow family.”