Hillbilly Elegy
“One of ten other biographies I recommend.”
Why it is worth your time
Hillbilly Elegy is J.D. Vance's 2016 memoir of growing up in Middletown, Ohio, in a family with roots in eastern Kentucky. His mother struggled with addiction, and he was raised largely by his grandmother. He joined the Marines, studied at Ohio State and Yale Law School, and the book uses his story to describe the white working class of Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Vance was elected to the US Senate from Ohio in 2022 and became vice president in 2025. Jason put it on his January 2019 list of 10 biographies, where he argued that outsiders learn how insiders got there by reading their lives. It suits readers who want a first-person account rather than data. The caveat is that it mixes memoir with social argument, Appalachian scholars in Appalachian Reckoning contested that argument, and Vance's later career as senator and vice president now shapes how it is read.
