Overview

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis--that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were ""dirt poor and in love,"" and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

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9781504734325

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Reviews

Never before have I read a memoir so powerful, and so necessary. -- Reihan Salam, executive editor, National Review Both heartbreaking and heartwarming, this memoir is akin to investigative journalism...A quick and engaging read. -- Library Journal An unusually timely and deeply affecting view of a social class whose health and economic problems are making headlines in this election year. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A harrowing portrait of much that has gone wrong in America over the past two generations...An honest look at the dysfunction that afflicts too many working-class Americans. -- National Review Essential reading for this moment in history. -- New York Times A beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America...A riveting book. -- Wall Street Journal Shocking, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and hysterically funny. -- Amy Chua, New York Times bestselling author At first the straight man with facts and figures, Vance eases into a multigenerational saga set in eastern Ohio and Kentucky, the story of so many Americans, even those who aren't 'hillbillies'...[and] introduces listeners to a community seldom considered but all around us. -- AudioFile

Author Information

J.D. Vance grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. He enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school and served in Iraq. A graduate of the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he has contributed to the National Review and the New York Times, and works as an investor at a leading venture capital firm. Vance lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his family. Author mail for J.D. Vance can be sent to the below: P.O. Box 1040 West Chester, OH 45071

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