Hillbilly Elegy

A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

380 pages

English language

Published Jan. 2, 2018 by Thorndike Press.

ISBN:
978-1-4328-4000-6
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4 stars (3 reviews)

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.

2 editions

Review of 'Hillbilly Elegy' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Wow.  I read this book in one sitting.  I spent the whole time nodding my head.  I got out of bed to start writing this to make of the thoughts flying around my brain.  Before reading the book I had heard that it was controversial.  After reading it I have no idea why.


This is the story of most of the people I know.

I've often summed up my husband and I like this:




  • My husband is what happens when you educate a hillbilly.

  • I'm what happens when two educated hillbillies breed.

In my life I've lived in Western Pennsylvania, East Tennessee, Central Ohio, and Northeast Ohio.  I don't wander far from Appalachia.  Most white people I know have roots somewhere deeper in Appalachia.  I had never considered that the reason for this was a migration north of people from coal mining country to the industrial centers farther north in …

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rated it

4 stars

Subjects

  • Working class, history
  • Working class, united states
  • Whites, history
  • Social mobility, united states
  • Kentucky, economic conditions
  • Kentucky, social conditions
  • Ohio, biography
  • Kentucky, biography
  • Ohio, economic conditions