Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of Family And Culture In Crisis
By: J. D. Vance
Harper (June 28, 2016)
273 pages

Few make it out of extreme poverty and bad situations. J.D. Vance did. Whether it was luck, the right influences at the right time, or what, Vance made it all the way to the military, college, and then Yale Law School. The problem is that the working class white culture of Appalachia that he left behind is still there, and there are no easy fixes to the cultural issues that plague it. Through his own story, Vance lets us observe first hand the problems on both a macro and micro level.

Two of my favorite quotes:

“I couldn’t believe that mild-mannered Papaw, whom I adored as a child, was such a violent drunk. His behavior was due at least partly to Mamaw’s disposition. She was a violent nondrunk.”

“As a culture, we had no heroes. Certainly not any politician—Barack Obama was then the most admired man in America (and likely still is), but even when the country was enraptured by his rise, most Middletonians viewed him suspiciously. George W. Bush had few fans in 2008. Many loved Bill Clinton, but many more saw him as the symbol of American moral decay, and Ronald Reagan was long dead. We loved the military but had no George S. Patton figure in the modern army. I doubt my neighbors could even name a high-ranking military officer. The space program, long a source of pride, had gone the way of the dodo, and with it the celebrity astronauts. Nothing united us with the core fabric of American society. We felt trapped in two seemingly unwinnable wars, in which a disproportionate share of the fighters came from our neighborhood, and in an economy that failed to deliver the most basic promise of the American Dream—a steady wage.”

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By: P.T. Barnum

BarnumMedia.com – Jason P. Jordan (February 11, 2014)
83 pages

This is a short little volume written by a man many consider to be one of the best showman of all-time. You probably know him from the long running Barnum and Baily Circus. In this book, Barnum simple spells out advice on how the young should go about having a successful career. In money getting: What should you lean into? What should you shy away from?

Two of my favorite quotes:

“There is no greater mistake than when a young man believes he will succeed with borrowed money. Why? Because every man’s experience coincides with that of Mr. Astor, who said, “it was more difficult for him to accumulate his first thousand dollars, than all the succeeding millions that made up his colossal fortune.” Money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience. Give a boy twenty thousand dollars and put him in business, and the chances are that he will lose every dollar of it before he is a year older.”

“Engage in one kind of business only, and stick to it faithfully until you succeed, or until your experience shows that you should abandon it. A constant hammering on one nail will generally drive it home at last, so that it can be clinched. When a man’s undivided attention is centered on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain was occupied by a dozen different subjects at once. Many a fortune has slipped through a man’s fingers because he was engaged in too many occupations at a time. There is good sense in the old caution against having too many irons in the fire at once.”

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