Hillbilly Elegy
A review of

Hillbilly Elegy

A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

J. D. Vance • Harper • 2016

J.D.Vance’s Climb

by Jeff Ostrowski

J.D. Vance went from hard times to the Senate to GOP Vice-Presidential nominee. Here's how he recalls his roots.

 

For decades, impoverished white people of the Rust Belt were the invisible face of American poverty. But in 2016, Donald Trump rode to the White House on a wave of white working-class anger, and the memoir J.D. Vance published that year about growing up in poverty in Appalachia rocketed to the top of The New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists.

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