James David Vance is an American venture capitalist, author, and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Ohio since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he came to prominence with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
Official portrait, 2023
Vance in 2017
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a bestselling 2016 memoir by J. D. Vance about the Appalachian values of his Kentucky family and the social and socioeconomic problems of his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where his mother's parents moved when they were young.
Hillbilly Elegy