Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” has shot to the top of book charts as the movie adaptation hits #9 on Netflix following his ascension to Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate.
“Hillbilly Elegy” is currently ranking #1 on the New York Times nonfiction lists for both print and digital. Vance nabbed the top spot on Publisher’s Weekly and USA Today’s book charts, beating out popular fiction titles like “It Ends With Us.” The movie adaptation of the book, starring Gabriel Basso, Amy Adams, and Glenn Close is also back in Netflix’s Top 10 movies at the time of writing, having been viewed more than 3 million times. (RELATED: Forget Hillbilly Elegy. This Column Is The Best Thing JD Vance Has Ever Written)
GLENDALE, ARIZONA – JULY 31: Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) gives remarks at a campaign rally at Arizona Christian University on July 31, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. Vance has traveled to cities across the Southwest to attend rallies this week. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
MONTEZUMA PASS, ARIZONA – AUGUST 01: Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) talks to local law enforcement, boarder patrol officials and local ranchers as he tours the U.S. Border Wall on August 01, 2024 in Montezuma Pass, Arizona. Vance is visiting the border on the final stop of his first visit to the Southwest as a vice presidential candidate. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN – JULY 17: Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) greets his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance, on stage on the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Delegates, politicians, and the Republican faithful are in Milwaukee for the annual convention, concluding with former President Donald Trump accepting his party’s presidential nomination. The RNC takes place from July 15-18. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
While I’ve not seen the movie, the book is arguably one of the best written. It tells a devastating yet inspiring personal journey through a childhood in working-class America, offering a sharp insight into the places forgotten by coastal elites and almost every politician …
Until Vance got himself out of the military, graduated from Ohio State and then Yale, started a family, became a best-selling author (when the book was released) worked in the private sector, and is now a senator who may be Vice President … all by the age of 39. (RELATED: ‘That’s My Boy’: Vance’s Teary-Eyed Mom Spotted In RNC Crowd)
If you’re feeling like you’ve wasted your career, don’t sweat it. Take some time for yourself today. Go read a book, or watch a movie. I’ve got a great one I can recommend!
Check out Mr. Right’s article on J.D. Vance:
Forget Hillbilly Elegy. This Column Is The Best Thing JD Vance Has Ever Written
A little-known column Vance wrote while serving as a Marine resurfaced Wednesday, and it is easily one of the best, if not the best, pieces he has written to date, better, even, than his best-selling memoir.
In the Aug. 27, 2006, edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Vance recalls the night he watched his favorite team, the Cincinnati Bengals, lose in the AFC Wild Card game as he was stationed in Iraq. You can already see Vance’s gift for storytelling that would later return in “Hillbilly Elegy”. Just in the opening paragraph alone, he closes it out with a beautiful sentence, a perfect juxtaposition, that sets up the column’s entire theme: “Yet my focus wasn’t on the war, but on a 19-inch TV.”
From there, Vance riffs on his love for the Bengals and the challenges that it brought deployed in Iraq (usually, only one NFL game could air at a time), how the new franchise quarterback Carson Palmer brought “pride back” to his city, and how watching football is much more than an excuse to pound beer and eat wings:
Watching the Bengals wasn’t about just football: it was about seeing that beautiful Cincinnati skyline every time they cut to commercial break; it was about watching the barges roll down the mighty Ohio like they’ve done for more than a century; it was about listening to the announcers talk about Cincinnati like it was a city of culture, not a city of losers.
