Hillbilly Elegy recounts Vice President J.D. Vance's powerful origin story... From a former
marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as the Vice President of the United States an
incisive 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. THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "You will not
read a more important book about America this year." — The Economist "A riveting book." — The
Wall Street Journal "Essential reading." — David Brooks New York Times This bestselling memoir
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white
working-class Americans in the Rust Belt. The disintegration of this group a process that has
been slowly occurring now for more than forty years has been reported 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 offering a
searing inside look at poverty in America. The Vance family story a powerful example of the
struggle for social mobility 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
one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School a conventional marker of
success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy
plays out we learn that J.D.'s grandparents aunt uncle and most of all his mother
struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life never fully escaping the
legacy of abuse addiction poverty and family trauma so characteristic of their part of
America. With piercing honesty Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of
his chaotic family history. A deeply moving story about Appalachian culture 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. What does it take to break a cycle of poverty and trauma that
spans generations? A Raw Look at the White Working Class: Go beyond the headlines for a deeply
personal account of a people in crisis from the hollers of Kentucky to the factory towns of
Ohio. The Legacy of Addiction and Trauma: Witness the devastating impact of alcoholism and
abuse as one family grapples with the demons that followed them from Appalachia. An Unlikely
Path to the Ivy League: Follow J.D. Vance's improbable journey from a former marine to a Yale
Law School graduate showing what upward mobility truly feels like. The Fraying American Dream:
An urgent searingly honest meditation on what happens when the promise of a better life seems
to slip away for an entire segment of the country.
