One of the great studies in class, poverty and modern American society, Vance's account of his family's journey from 'dirt-poor' Appalachia to a precarious middle class existence in Ohio makes for unputdownable reading.
Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month for June 2017
J. D. Vance grew up in the hills of Kentucky. His family and friends were the people most of the world calls rednecks, hillbillies or white trash.
In this deeply moving memoir, Vance tells the story of his family’s demons and of America ’ s problem with generational neglect. How his mother struggled against, but never fully escaped, the legacies of abuse, alcoholism, poverty and trauma. How his grandparents, ‘dirt poor and in love’, gave everything for their children to chase the American dream. How Vance beat the odds to graduate from Yale Law School. And how America came to abandon and then condescend to its white working classes, until they reached breaking point.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780008220563
Number of pages: 272
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 21 mm
Weight: 200 g
Language: English
‘Brilliant … offers an acute insight into the reasons voters have put their trust in Trump’ - Observer
‘Powerful and highly readable account of the light of the poor white Americans in Kentucky’ - Books of the Year, Financial Times
‘Essential reading for all yankophiles, politicians and anyone interested in how Donald Trump won over the rust belt to arrive at the White House’ - Books of the Year, Sunday Times
‘The memoir gripping America … Vividly articulates the despair and disillusionment of blue-collar America’ - Sunday Times
‘A tough-edged elegy for ‘white trash’ hillbilly America’ - David Aaronovitch, The Times
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The Make-Believe
Raising Hare
Stone Lands
Bloody Dangerous
And Away...
Mother Mary Comes To Me
A Hymn to Life
The Trading Game
Enough Said
Devil on my Shoulder
I'm Glad My Mom Died
Careless People
Everything I Know About Love
This soon to be major motion picture is a must read.
An important and honest read about American politics and offers an insight as to why people put their trust into Trump.
When I first opened this book, from the reviews, I thought it was going to be a lot more of a politics book and a lot less of a memoir than it was. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
That's not to...
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I had a mixed reaction to this book. I enjoyed the personal element and family anecdotes, but they were interspersed with 'sociobabble' - analyses and comment that I felt would have been better suited to a... More
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