Taking a probing look at our world

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis ~ by J. D. Vance, 2018, memoir, 264 pages

Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a consideration of class, culture, and the American dream.  Vance's grandparents were "dirt poor and in love."  They got married and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them.

Their grandchild (the author) graduated from Yale Law School, which is a conventional marker of their success in achieving upward mobility for their family.  That's the short version.  The slightly longer version is that his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and mother struggled to varying degrees with the demands of their new middle class life.  According to this summary I found on Amazon, his family and Vance himself still carry around the demons of their chaotic family history.

Delving into his own personal story and drawing on a wide array of sociological studies, Vance takes us deep into working class life in the Appalachian region.  This demographic of the United States has been slowly disintegrating over the years, and Vance provides an attempt to understand when and how "hillbillies" lost faith in any hope of upward mobility.

With the announcement yesterday that J. D. Vance was former President Trump's choice for his vice-presidential running mate, I immediately called the nearest bookstore and put a copy of Vance's book on hold so I could pick it up in a few minutes.  I got it and started reading it last night.  Have you read this memoir?  What did you think of it?