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

By J.D. Vance

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062300547
• ISBN13: 9780062300546
• Release Date: June 2016
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

No From Me

Check out Bell Hooks for an accurate Appalachian experience book. This is a foul book.

Not kid friendly, emotional and telling

Love or hate his politics, this book explains a lot about them. Definitely a huge emotional lift to get through. Lots of people saying they didn't finish, I'd encourage them to read just the last two chapters which cover his final thoughts

Trash by white trash

A book full of lies written by a white supremacist , bigot and misogynistic fool. Don't Waste your time

Absolute liar

He ain't even a real hillbilly. Meow.

Eye opening glimpse into generational poverty

Honest and interesting look into the life of the author.

He’s a man of no moral compass

How can you believe an author who flip flops on his own recorded words? Makes you wonder if he forgot what it was like to be poor and to struggle. I feel the most sorry for his children. To read a book written by their father about his life, and then to see who he has become? What a strange disappointment that will be.

No wonder his mom chose drugs

Pretty garbage

Very Revealing

I read this book when it was published. Of course, the fact that the author would become our Vice President was completely unknown at that time. I call it revealing because in retrospect it does serve as insight into an individual whom I find to be malevolent, deeply disturbed, and disturbing. His cold disregard for the majority of the people in his early life is now reflected in his behavior in public office. One can only hope that his tenure will be short lived.

Attention grab

Not even plausible! An affront to those who actually had a difficult upbringing

Read this years ago, hated it then and still hate it now.

It’s awful, he’s awful, and reading this was a waste of my time and energy.

Lies for lying liars. Not even remotely believable.

This guy never should’ve been able to go to Yale based on his own values. He openly supports a movement that says we’ve educated too many people “beyond their position”. Maybe it’s his own imposter syndrome leading him to this conclusion, but either way this story is completely disingenuous and I can’t believe people fall for these kind of con men men over and over again throughout history.

Garbage absolutely fiction.

Garbage Absolutely fiction. Total fiction since he literally lived in Ohio & spending time in Kentucky Appalachia doesn’t count.

Disrespectful

Vance paints a poor picture of the Appalachian region and blames its hardships on the people entirely... forgetting the long history of exploitation at the hands of the american government, the coal mining industry, and the pharmaceutical industry. I'd only bought this to annotate it. I reccommend reading Appalachian Reckoning to better understand the needs of this region.

Trash

This piece of trash is nothing but fiction that has oozed out of Vance's diseased brain, like sewage from a backed-up toilet. Nothing in this so-called origin story is true. Vance (not his real name) grew up in Ohio in upper middle class privilege and the most troublesome decision he made was whether to join the school golf team. He was sent to an ivy league college, paid for by his parents and is now a grifting politician, just like the obscene and grotesque orange rapist he fronts for in Washington. Avoid this nonsense at all cost!

Borefest

Hillbilly Elegy felt at least to me that Vance was embellishing the moral failings of his “hillbilly” family in order to make his story more compelling and his success more intriguing. I wouldn’t recommend.

Badly written book by an even worse person

Boring, contrived, and egocentric take. Not surprising to see the ridiculous rhetoric from JD now.

A nonfiction book that belongs in the fiction section

I read this before he became a politician. I know someone from the same area as him and it's nothing like what he described it as. Maybe he should've titled the book The Grifter.

Too much cussing and dry statistics

I started reading it but I won’t finish. I don’t enjoy the foul language, and the statistics I’m not interested in.

down to earth story of JD Vance

Reveals the down to earth story of how JD Vance become who he is today and those who influenced him.

Filth

I couldn’t even finish it. I felt like I needed to spiritually cleanse myself and my house from the vitriol in this book.

Insufferable

Thoughtful readers will be sorely disappointed by this book and its author. I read it for book club several years ago and found its tone smarmy and disingenuous. Because of that, it’s impossible to trust that any of the events in this memoir actually happened. The author has reinvented himself many times by changing his name and choosing different family members with which to claim relation, all in a sad attempt to be liked or respected. Clearly, he is neither.

Meh

Waste of my precious time.

Would love the whole book

Would love to have the whole book. It’s missing the first four pages, you can see they’ve been ripped out. Why? Why would anyone rip pages out of a book. I wanted so badly to read this book but again the first four pages are gone. Why would this book be for sale again this one said very good I would say NOT acceptable because it’s missing the first four pages. I love the idea of saving money but this is the second book I’ve received that I would not have bought if I’d known its condition. Please check the books before you sell them.

I enjoyed it

It was heartbreaking to read I can't imagine to live like this. I have great respect for Mr. Vance. Not a political thing I enjoyed reading it

Very Insightful

Having never lived in Appalachia it is hard for me to review this one way or the other. I will say it was a compelling read that kept me interested. I understand living in poverty because we were poor, but my family was always employed so I cannot relate to living off the government dole. The one time I tried to get help I was turned down so I never tried again. Very insightful and gives me respect for Mr. Vance. Read it for yourselves and see what you think.

Resilience

I could not put this book down! What struck me the most is the resilient determination of a young hillbilly boy who was born into a life surrounded by poverty yet managed to live through the toughest of circumstances. We are all born into and among different types of environments. This young boy along with his family from the Appalachian mountains, an area that is unusual in it's own right, a place where most children who have lived their entire lives there, having never left their impoverished lifestyle while continually being looked upon by city folks as being unrefined. This is a story of love of family, their strengths and their weaknesses, yet they are forever bound through the unity of family, with the use of tuff love, all that is required for their success through all obstacles. Its story contains the harshness of behavior and its consequences, yet it also holds some level of humor leaving no doubt that the love of family is most important and the willingness to change ones circumstances by beating all odds in order to rise and live a successful life is possible!

A Book Everyone Should Read

At first, I thought it was another sad book about the underserved people in areas of the south and I didn't care to read more of that. But instead, it is a wonderful book about the writer striving and overcoming his growing up years in Eastern Kentucky and, while keeping his good and not so good memories of family and the poverty of his surroundings, overcome all to join the Marine Corps, then using that training and discipline to go on to become an Ivy League lawyer. Instead of running away from his past to become an Eastern elite, he chose to take another path and use his considerable talents to contribute in other ways. Having lived a somewhat similar early life in small town middle Illinois, I related strongly to this story. It is moving and one of the best books I have read in a long time. I hope this is not the author's one and only book.