Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
By
#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
Former graduate of the Faculty of Jurisprudence and Marina Yale the story is an excellent example of growth in a poor country City Rust Belt, which offers a broader and deeper understanding of the struggles of the American white working class.
Hillbilly Elegy is a personal analysis about a culture in crisis, that of the white Americans working class. The decline of this group, a demographic group of our country that has slowly disintegrated over the past forty years, has been reported with increasing and alarming frequency, but never before had it been written so painfully. In the book, J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional and class decline is when born with the neck problem.
The history of the Vance family begins, hopefully, in post-war America. J. D. grandparents were "very poor and in love" and moved north from the Appalachian region of Kentucky to Ohio, hoping to escape the terrible poverty that surrounds them. They raised a bourgeois family and their nephew (the author) eventually graduated from Yale Law School, a classic indicator of his success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the Hillbilly Elegy family saga shows, we learn that this is only a short and superficial version. His grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister and especially his mother Vance fought the demands of his new life in the middle class and could never completely escape the legacy of abuse. Alcoholism, poverty and trauma. Feature of your part of America. Vance shows surprisingly how he always leads demons from his chaotic family history.
A moving memory with his humor and colorful characters, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of true mobility. And it is an urgent and worrying meditation on the loss of the American dream for much of this country.
"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
Former graduate of the Faculty of Jurisprudence and Marina Yale the story is an excellent example of growth in a poor country City Rust Belt, which offers a broader and deeper understanding of the struggles of the American white working class.
Hillbilly Elegy is a personal analysis about a culture in crisis, that of the white Americans working class. The decline of this group, a demographic group of our country that has slowly disintegrated over the past forty years, has been reported with increasing and alarming frequency, but never before had it been written so painfully. In the book, J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional and class decline is when born with the neck problem.
The history of the Vance family begins, hopefully, in post-war America. J. D. grandparents were "very poor and in love" and moved north from the Appalachian region of Kentucky to Ohio, hoping to escape the terrible poverty that surrounds them. They raised a bourgeois family and their nephew (the author) eventually graduated from Yale Law School, a classic indicator of his success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the Hillbilly Elegy family saga shows, we learn that this is only a short and superficial version. His grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister and especially his mother Vance fought the demands of his new life in the middle class and could never completely escape the legacy of abuse. Alcoholism, poverty and trauma. Feature of your part of America. Vance shows surprisingly how he always leads demons from his chaotic family history.
A moving memory with his humor and colorful characters, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of true mobility. And it is an urgent and worrying meditation on the loss of the American dream for much of this country.
