Hillbilly Elegy

illuminate as people awoke to
investigate the commotion. And if things
got out of hand, the police would come
and take someone’s drunk dad or
unhinged mom down to the city building.
That building housed the tax collector,
the public utilities, and even a small
museum, but all the kids in my
neighborhood knew it as the home of
Middletown’s short-term jail.
I consumed books about social
policy and the working poor. One book
in particular, a study by eminent
sociologist William Julius Wilson called
The Truly Disadvantaged, struck a
nerve. I was sixteen the first time I read
it, and though I didn’t fully understand it