“Hillbilly Elegy,” the controversial memoir that brought Ohio Senator J.D. Vance into the national spotlight, is experiencing a resurgence in sales following former President Donald Trump’s selection of Vance as his running mate.
Vance’s 2016 memoir was ranked no. 220 on Amazon’s bestseller list on Monday morning, but after Trump announced Vance’s selection, the book soared to number one, according to the Associated Press.
“Hillbilly Elegy” has sold more than 1.5 million copies to date, and some experts anticipate the number to increase significantly in the coming months.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Vance outsells Stephen King this year,” Allan Salkin, co-owner of the New Books Company, a podcast production company focusing on book publishing, told the Wall Street Journal.
The book narrates Vance’s family history in Kentucky and Ohio, while also examining the cultural and economic changes that led some white working-class voters to switch party affiliations from Democratic to Republican. Topics covered in “Hillbilly Elegy” include drug addiction, government assistance, and masculinity.
“I felt that if I wrote a very honest, and sometimes painful, book, it would open people’s eyes to the complex matrix of these problems,” Vance said in 2016. “Not as many people would pay attention if they assumed I was just another academic spouting off, rather than someone who has looked at these problems in a very personal way.”
The memoir initially received praise from the conservative media, partly because of Vance’s criticism of the welfare state and the “cultural habits” he argued kept rural whites in poverty. It was also cited in the liberal press as offering potential explanations for Trump’s 2016 victory.
In 2020, Ron Howard adapted “Hillbilly Elegy” into a movie starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close. Though the film received mixed reviews, it earned two Oscar nominations, including a Best Supporting Actress nod for Close’s performance and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
However, some from the region have been critical of Vance’s writing, arguing that he relied too much on generalizations and that his upbringing in suburban Ohio did not accurately reflect Appalachian life.
“‘Elegy’ is little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class. Vance’s central argument is that hillbillies themselves are to blame for their troubles,” Sarah Jones, a journalist from the border of southwest Virginia and east Tennessee, wrote in the New Republic in 2016.
“I look at my home and see a region abandoned by the government elected to serve it,” she continued. “Central Appalachia is a sea of distress. If you are born where I grew up, you have to travel hundreds of miles to find a prosperous America. How do you get off the dole when there’s not enough work to go around? Frequently, you don’t.”