Rural ballad about the American Dream

JD Vance's book is an authoritative account of the crisis of the white American working class: the decline of a social group that has been crumbling over the past forty years has been widely reported, but we have never had the chance to read such an honest, personal account. Vance's grandparents escaped the poverty that surrounded them, built a middle-class life, and their grandson graduated from Yale Law School, proving that it is possible to rise up the ranks. But the Vance family story reveals that this is only the surface. All of the author's close relatives struggled hard with the demands of their middle-class lives. They were never able to completely free themselves from a legacy of alcoholism, violence, and trauma, and Vance unabashedly shows that he himself still struggles with the demons of his background. A poignant, yet humorous, memoir about the American Dream, Country Ballad, which features flesh-and-blood characters, reveals what it means to rise from the depths and how the American Dream has become inaccessible to the masses. JD Vance's book was an explosive critical and public success upon its publication, and over the years has become a reference for all those interested in America's recent past and present. In 2020, Ron Howard (The Da Vinci Code, A Beautiful Mind) made it into a film for Netflix, starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.