“Hillbilly Elegy,” the controversial memoir that brought Ohio Senator J.D. Vance into the national spotlight, is experiencing a surge in sales after former President Donald Trump chose the former venture capitalist as his running mate.
Vance’s 2016 memoir was ranked at number 220 on Amazon’s bestseller list on Monday morning. Following Trump’s announcement, the book soared to the number one position, according to the Associated Press.
“Hillbilly Elegy” has sold more than 1.5 million copies to date, a figure that experts predict will grow 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, an organization that discusses book publishing, told the Wall Street Journal.
The book details Vance’s family history in Kentucky and Ohio and examines the cultural and economic changes that led some white working-class voters to shift from Democratic to Republican affiliations. Among the topics discussed in “Hillbilly Elegy” are drug addiction, government assistance, and masculinity.
“I felt that if I wrote a very forthright, and sometimes painful, book, that it would open people’s eyes to the very real matrix of these problems,” Vance said in 2016. “Not as many people would pay attention to it if they assumed I was just another academic spouting off, and not someone who’s looked at these problems in a very personal way.”
Vance’s book initially received praise from conservative media, partly due to his criticism of the welfare state and the “cultural habits” he claimed kept rural whites in poverty. The memoir was also cited in liberal media as offering possible explanations for Trump’s 2016 victory.
In 2020, Ron Howard adapted “Hillbilly Elegy” into a film starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close. The movie received mixed reviews but earned two Oscar nominations: Best Supporting Actress for Close and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
However, some from the region have been critical of Vance’s writing, arguing that he relied too heavily on generalizations and that his suburban Ohio upbringing 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,” wrote Sarah Jones, a journalist from the border of southwest Virginia and east Tennessee, 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.”