social mobility

"Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck"--Provided by publisher.

Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America.

Explores why the American Dream is in jeopardy for millions of American children due to a growing opportunity gap between affluent and disadvantaged kids. Includes suggestions for creating more upward mobility, and features personal narratives and the latest research.

Examines the lives of first-generation college graduates of blue-collar parents as they try to adjust to the move from working class to the middle class.

Explores the large chasm between the upper and lower classes of black America and why it has developed, reviewing the years that have passed since the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Includes interviews with prominent blacks such as Cornel West, William Julius Wilson, and Maulana Karenga as well as civil rights veterans Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, and Julian Bond.

Presents a collection of essays that examine the role that class distinctions plays in the United States despite the concept of the American dream.

A memoir chronicling the author's upbringing in a Philadelphia housing project in the 1960s, covering his father's erratic and emotional behavior and his own flight from the confines of his youth to follow his dreams and better his circumstances.

Contains eleven articles in which the authors provide various prospectives on the American dream, debating what the dream is and if it is attainable in the twenty-first centry.

Presents research on emotional health and achievement through a story involving the characters Erica and Harold, an American couple that grows while facing success and failure, demonstrating how the unconscious mind is where character is formed.