Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

American elites loved this book (and so did I) but I suspect the working class Southern Ohio/Northern Kentucky residents J.D. Vance describes in Hillbilly Elegy would find this book: (1) condescending, written as it is by a former Ohioan who fled the area for Yale and then Washington D.C.; (2) insufficiently appreciative of the deep stigma and disdain our broader culture has for working-class people; (3) overly focused on the flaws of their own society, including the lack of role models and low expectations; and (4) insufficiently focused on the economic policies and corporate decisions that helped cause the region's economic decline (which ironically were made by many of the same elites that now look down on them).