Hillbilly Elegy

the 1800s thanks to its proximity to the
Miami River, which empties directly
into the Ohio. As kids, we joked that our
hometown was so generic that they
didn’t even bother to give it a real name:
It’s in the middle of Cincinnati and
Dayton, and it’s a town, so here we are.
(It’s not alone: A few miles from
Middletown is Centerville.)
Middletown is generic in other ways. It
exemplified the economic expansion of
the manufacturing-based Rust Belt town.
Socioeconomically, it is largely
working-class. Racially, there are lots of
white and black people (the latter the
product of an analogous great migration)
but few others. And culturally, it is very