Hillbilly Elegy

(Rick Simeone) #1

migration from Appalachia to the
industrial powerhouse economies in the
Midwest. The first happened after World
War I, when returning veterans found it
nearly impossible to find work in the
not-yet-industrialized mountains of
Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee.
It ended as the Great Depression hit
Northern economies hard.^4 My
grandparents were part of the second
wave, composed of returning veterans
and the rapidly rising number of young


adults in 1940s and ’50s Appalachia.^5
As the economies of Kentucky and West
Virginia lagged behind those of their
neighbors, the mountains had only two
products that the industrial economies of

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