Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

J. D. Vance

May 2018 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER IS NOW A MAJOR-MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY RON HOWARD AND STARRING AMY ADAMS, GLENN CLOSE, AND GABRIEL BASSO

"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

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. 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 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 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, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and 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 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.

Ratings and reviews

Very very sophomoric . Written by a very young man who escaped his upbringing by his grandmother’s devotion & the US Marines. The only thing unusual about it is that he took the time to write it down. Cannot possibly understand how it could be made into a movie of any interest at all. The screenplay had to be written by someone else because the book has zero dialogue. It is remembrances from this 31 year old man about his life from childhood onward. A sad statement that there is so much hoopla about somethings so simple. Amazingly, He has not figured out how to solve all of the problems of poor Appalachia, or any of the other poor poor poor parts of the United States of America, of which there are many, and where the problems are the same. Sophomoric. Sad

I thought Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey would never allow anything to tear her him or them apart. You 4 boys still believe that. KINGDOM HEARTS

I have not read the book. I just finished the movie on Netflix. Amazing and raw story! I am sure the book is 10x better as books normally are. I recommend this title whether by video or words.

About the author

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.