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

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
J. D. Vance

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERWaterstones Nonfiction Book of the Month (June)‘THE POLITICAL BOOK OF THE YEAR’ Sunday Times‘You will not read a more important book about America this year’ Economist‘A memoir of life in the Trump-voting white working class is the political book of the year’ Sunday Times‘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 the United States 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 post-war 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 humour and vividly colourful 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 the country.

Copyright (#ulink_be809a91-c0b0-5d32-983d-373322e4511b)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

WilliamCollinsBooks.com

First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016

First published in the United States by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, in 2016

Copyright © 2016 by J.D. Vance.

Cover design by Jarrod Taylor. Cover photograph © Joanna Cepuchowicz/EyeEm/Getty Images; © megatronservizi/Getty Images (flag)

J.D. Vance asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008220563

Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN 9780008219758

Version: 2017-05-03

Praise for Hillbilly Elegy: (#ulink_16273e55-8b55-5730-b286-73e4b1e935f6)

‘A beautifully and powerfully written memoir, Hillbilly Elegy is shocking, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching and hysterically funny. It’s also a profoundly important book, one that opens a window on a part of America usually hidden from view and offers genuine hope in the form of hard-hitting honesty. Hillbilly Elegy announces the arrival of a gifted and utterly original new writer and should be required reading for everyone who cares about what’s really happening in America’ AMY CHUA, New York Times bestselling author of The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

‘Powerful and highly readable account of the plight of the poor white Americans in Kentucky’ Books of the Year, Financial Times

‘Essential reading for all yankophiles, politicians and anyone interested in how Donald Trump won over the rust belt to arrive at the White House’ Books of the Year, Sunday Times

‘Vance’s vivid portrayal of blue-collar America has made it a bestseller in that country, though the political disaffection he describes will also resonate with British readers’ Mail on Sunday

‘The most important recent book about America’ Economist

‘The memoir gripping America … Vividly articulates the despair and disillusionment of blue-collar America’ Sunday Times

‘A tough-edged elegy for “white trash” hillbilly America’ DAVID AARONOVITCH, The Times

‘I bought this to try to better understand Trump’s appeal to those white working-class people who feel left behind, but the memoir is so much more than that … It’s an important social history/commentary but also a gripping, unputdownable page-turner’ INDIA KNIGHT, Evening Standard

‘A beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America … [Vance] offers a compelling explanation for why it’s so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it … a riveting book’ Wall Street Journal

‘Quietly thoughtful, poignant … while the political timeliness of Hillbilly Elegy is undeniable, Vance truly shines when he takes us with him “down the holler” into an America we thought we knew – until we realized how little of it we truly understood’ Huffington Post

‘[A] compassionate, discerning sociological analysis … Combining thoughtful inquiry with firsthand experience, Mr. Vance has inadvertently provided a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election, and he’s done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans. Imagine that’ JENNIFER SENIOR, New York Times

‘[Vance’s] description of the culture he grew up in is essential reading for this moment in history’ DAVID BROOKS, New York Times

‘[A] frank, unsentimental, harrowing memoir … a superb book’ New York Post

‘[An] understated, engaging debut … 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

‘Both heartbreaking and heartwarming, this memoir is akin to investigative journalism … A quick and engaging read, this book is well suited to anyone interested in a study of modern America, as Vance’s assertions about Appalachia are far more reaching’ Library Journal

‘Couldn’t have been better timed … 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

‘Vance compellingly describes the terrible toll that alcoholism, drug abuse, and an unrelenting code of honor took on his family, neither excusing the behavior nor condemning it … The portrait that emerges is a complex one … Unerringly forthright, remarkably insightful, and refreshingly focused, Hillbilly Elegy is the cry of a community in crisis’ Booklist

‘To understand the rage and disaffection of America’s working-class whites, look to Greater Appalachia. In Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance confronts us with the economic and spiritual travails of this forgotten corner of our country. Here we find women and men who dearly love their country, yet who feel powerless as their way of life is devastated. Never before have I read a memoir so powerful, and so necessary’ REIHAN SALAM, National Review

‘Elites tend to see our social crisis in terms of “stagnation” or “inequality”. J. D. Vance writes powerfully about the real people who are kept out of sight by academic abstractions’ PETER THIEL, entrepreneur, investor, and author of Zero to One

Dedication (#ulink_1f75e161-5b7c-5270-84f8-9056eb8e7afa)

For Mamaw and Papaw, my very own hillbilly terminators

Contents

Cover (#u638b7fc4-33d0-518b-af05-2c42647ab93b)

Title Page (#uc9703d0f-4638-5eaf-a040-84c23de5f700)

Copyright (#ulink_342a45f3-54a6-5665-aacd-2108b1eb8fb8)

Praise (#u463e9ca2-fa93-5e31-a129-e0b4c6658f0c)

Dedication (#ulink_973384f6-5fcf-55f2-a238-e901f845e443)

Introduction (#ulink_e53dfae0-6a0d-52c7-bbd4-0cd4e1250330)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_f0ebcc77-fda5-5a21-82d3-e4da5b058936)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_858d339a-2813-5dd9-986e-b004be3e127c)

Chapter 3 (#ulink_b9edd5b3-927b-5d13-a0f9-8258825c03fe)

Chapter 4 (#ulink_9688ef3b-15f0-547d-8e23-5716ba6f9fef)

Chapter 5 (#ulink_0cb2833e-6164-5526-b63d-b6f050568410)