Regular price: $25.09

Membership details Membership details
  • A 30-day trial plus your first audiobook, free.
  • 1 credit/month after trial – good for any book, any price.
  • Easy exchanges – swap any book you don’t love.
  • Keep your audiobooks, even if you cancel.
  • After your trial, Audible is just $14.95/month.
Buy Now for $25.09
Select or Add a new payment method

Buy Now with 1 Credit

By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Buy Now for $25.09

Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

Winner, 2017 APA Audie Awards - Nonfiction
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful 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.
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on 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.
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, his aunt, his uncle, his 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. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
©2016 J. D. Vance (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Show More Show Less

See More Like This

People who bought this also bought...

Audible.com Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful
5 out of 5 stars
By Gotta Tellya on 09-11-16

Enlightening!

Would you listen to Hillbilly Elegy again? Why?

Yes. I loved the stories that the author shared. Some were colorful and quaint, others were dark, sad, and disturbing. But a life lived, examined, and improved upon--that is irresistible to me.

What other book might you compare Hillbilly Elegy to and why?

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Have you listened to any of J. D. Vance’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I doubt if J.D. Vance has recorded other performances. One important thing I must point out: a few reveiwers noted that the author/narrator spoke too quickly. I had the opposite reaction. Finally, a narrator who moved along at a decent pace, and who was not more interested in emoting and acting than he was in getting on with the story! This is one of the few author-narrated audio books that I have really enjoyed. Another reviewer made negative comments re the off-colored language used by some of the people in J.D. Vance's autobiography. Sorry, but that's how those individuals expressed themselves. The author wasn't indulging in gratuitous or excessive cursing. What was he supposed to do--censor genuine, pithy remarks and change them to "Gosh darn" or "Gee whiz"? Time to grow up, readers!

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I felt very sad, reading how tough life has been and continues to be for one seldom noticed group of people, those of Scotch-Irish ancestry who proudly call themselves hillbillies. This isn't a group of people who suffer from lack of outside intervention, which they resent and resist, often rightly so. The tragedy is their assumption that their fates are sealed, that life will always be tough, that there is no future outside poverty and drugs and violent upholding of cultural codes. The author was blessed with some caring relatives and friends, who helped him cope with the effects of his cultural inheritance and his mother's substance addictions. The author remade himself through a stint in the Marines, then graduated from college and law school. Yet the effects of his hillbilly upbringing remain and require ongoing understanding, acceptance and modification. I'd like to meet J.D. Vance. He sounds like a remarkable man. Somehow, by his own transformation, he is uniting the best of both the hillbilly culture and modern mores and behaviors.

Any additional comments?

I worked as a nurse for decades. I took care of hundreds of people who had physical problems resulting from mental and emotional issues, often caused by unfortunate childhood experiences. Those who took responsibility for their own condition and fate did well. Those who wallowed in self pity, and who blamed others--family, school, law enforcement, the government--for their problems, never improved. Self pity and blaming others is a trap. Giving in to those two negatives is like crawling into a cave and rolling a stone across the entrance, so that no light can enter. Like the case of J.D. Vance, the only way to a happy, productive life is to accept and understand one's past, work hard in the present, and make positive plans for the future. And the key to all that is to recognize one's own worth. It's hard to feel worthy of a good life, unless we receive enough affection and encouragement along the way. I hope the hillbillies of this world, and all groups and individuals who lack good parents and adequate food, clothing and education, find what they need in other positive forms, like grandparents, teachers and good friends. There is always hope. Sometimes, we have to work hard to find hope. But it's there.

Read More Hide me

280 of 296 people found this review helpful

5 out of 5 stars
By Amazon Customer on 07-23-16

Deja vu for me

I was raised lower middle class. Not with the violence portrayed in the book but with the values and the incentive for a better life. I'm now a successful dentist. I wish that there was a version without the cussing and swearing for my grandkids to listen to. I'm in a very low socioeconomic community and understand the plight of many of my patients. I've shared the book with most of my 'reader" patients. And will continue to. But always with the caveat of the language. I can't share with most of my dental colleagues about my bootstrap early existence because they won't understand. But I can relate to my welfare patients and give back when I can.

Read More Hide me

287 of 314 people found this review helpful

See all Reviews
View All Categories
Contact Us
Help
Promo Code
Conditions of Use Privacy Policy Full Site
© Copyright 1997 - 2018 Audible, Inc