Revisiting J.D. Vance's memoir, 'Hillbilly Elegy'

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis examines the spiritual and social decline of the Appalachian white working class through the life story of its author, JD Vance. Growing up in a post-industrial Ohio town, Vance encountered the symptoms of community and familial dysfunction—drug and alcohol abuse, unstable marriages, lack of education, and evasion of hard work—that underscore the failing values of the culture from which he came.

Although Vance eventually escapes the poverty and dysfunction of his roots, attending college and Yale Law School, he finds that even economic mobility can never permanently erase the social markers of his hillbilly upbringing.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis examines the spiritual and social decline of the Appalachian white working class through the life story of its author, JD Vance. Growing up in a post-industrial Ohio town, Vance encountered the symptoms of community and familial dysfunction—drug and alcohol abuse, unstable marriages, lack of education, and evasion of hard work—that underscore the failing values of the culture from which he came.

Although Vance eventually escapes the poverty and dysfunction of his roots, attending college and Yale Law School, he finds that even economic mobility can never permanently erase the social markers of his hillbilly upbringing.

In Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, sociologist Arlie Hochschild seeks to understand the social, cultural, and emotional forces driving right-wing politics, in an effort to move past the partisan divide and approach American politics from a position of empathy for those on the right. By breaking down this empathy wall, we can come to truly inhabit the emotional world of the right, giving us insight into why these voters believe what they believe—and why those beliefs might make sense given these voters’ experiences.

In Caste, Isabel Wilkerson argues that the racial tensions in the United States are better explained through the lens of caste, not race—a 400-year-old hierarchy placing white people at the top and Black people at the bottom. Wilkerson examines the different caste systems around the world and how they damage the lives of everyone involved, even those at the top. She believes that to understand how to move forward, we must examine the past and the racial structures that keep progress as a nation at bay.

In this guide, we’ll explore the basics of Wilkerson’s caste theory, the eight tenets of a caste system, how the caste system affects the lives of people in the upper and lower castes, and how we can move away from caste and create a more equitable society. We’ll also compare Wilkerson’s ideas to those of other books on the subject of race, such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.

The election of Donald Trump has sparked a great deal of discussion about the fate of American democracy. How Democracies Die explores some key questions that have become paramount in the Trump era. Does the election of a figure like Trump—an inexperienced outsider with obvious authoritarian instincts—suggest that democracy in the US is backsliding? Are we doomed to suffer the fate of other 21st-century democracies, like Hungary, Venezuela, and Turkey, where true democracy ceased to exist? By what processes was democracy killed in those and other countries—and how might we prevent it here?

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis examines the spiritual and social decline of the Appalachian white working class through the life story of its author, JD Vance. Growing up in a post-industrial Ohio town, Vance encountered the symptoms of community and familial dysfunction—drug and alcohol abuse, unstable marriages, lack of education, and evasion of hard work—that underscore the failing values of the culture from which he came.

Although Vance eventually escapes the poverty and dysfunction of his roots, attending college and Yale Law School, he finds that even economic mobility can never permanently erase the social markers of his hillbilly upbringing.

In Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, sociologist Arlie Hochschild seeks to understand the social, cultural, and emotional forces driving right-wing politics, in an effort to move past the partisan divide and approach American politics from a position of empathy for those on the right. By breaking down this empathy wall, we can come to truly inhabit the emotional world of the right, giving us insight into why these voters believe what they believe—and why those beliefs might make sense given these voters’ experiences.

What are the greatest threats to democracy today? How do healthy democratic states descend into illiberalism and authoritarian rule—and how can defenders and proponents of democracy prevent this from happening?

In Shortform’s Master Guide to Threats to Democracy, we’ve synthesized the ideas and recommendations of some of the world’s leading political scientists from across the ideological spectrum to bring insight to this important—and timely—question. We’ll explore forces like polarization, the decline of democratic norms, and extreme wealth inequality that combine to weaken and undermine democratic institutions.

We’ll also examine some of the ways proponents of democracy can promote stronger and healthier democratic institutions through specific institutional reforms, new economic policies to combat inequality, and actions at the individual and grassroots levels to overcome the social divisions that corrode democracy.