Hillbilly Elegy

four years in the Marines, the move to
Columbus for college hadn’t seemed all
that significant. I’d become an expert at
leaving Middletown for other places,
and each time I felt at least a little
forlorn. But I knew this time that I was
never really coming back. That didn’t
bother me. Middletown no longer felt
like home.
On my first day at Yale Law School,
there were posters in the hallways
announcing an event with Tony Blair, the
former British prime minister. I couldn’t
believe it: Tony Blair was speaking to a
room of a few dozen students? If he
came to Ohio State, he would have filled
an auditorium of a thousand people.