#120 in Biography & memoir
Hillbilly Elegy
- NYT bestseller · 117 weeks on the list, peaked at #1
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About the book
Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an 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 decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. 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 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.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.0 across 582 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 80% of the weight and the score stays at 7.2 — the Biography & memoir average of 8.1 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.4 | 41 | 7% |
| Hardcover | 7.0 | 541 | 93% |
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Biography & memoir — with scores between 7.0 and 7.6, closest to this book.
