Hillbilly Elegy

and though I’m far less angry today than I
was then, it was my first indication that
the policies of Mamaw’s “party of the
working man”—the Democrats—
weren’t all they were cracked up to be.
Political scientists have spent
millions of words trying to explain how
Appalachia and the South went from
staunchly Democratic to staunchly
Republican in less than a generation.
Some blame race relations and the
Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil
rights movement. Others cite religious
faith and the hold that social
conservatism has on evangelicals in that
region. A big part of the explanation lies
in the fact that many in the white working