Kim Smith

I understand how it feels to be worried about your drinking because for nearly 20 years I struggled with my own problem. I tried everything to stop drinking alcohol, from creating silly rules about what I was "allowed" to drink to going through torturous "dry months" and taking dangerous prescription-only medication! Absolutely nothing I tried worked until I dramatically changed my thinking.

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.