Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis – that of the white working class in America. The decline of this group, a process that has been slowly unfolding for over forty years, has been reported with increasing frequency and concern, but never before has it been described so urgently from within. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what social, regional, and class-specific decline feels like when you are born into it. The story of the Vance family begins hopefully in post-war America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love" and moved from the Appalachian region of Kentucky to Ohio, hoping to escape the terrible poverty surrounding them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional sign of success in achieving intergenerational social mobility.