good on my promises of wild investment return. once that then starts going, the chief marketers of the scheme are not advertising they sport them up and that is a pattern that has recurred right up till. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >>. >> hello.

>> i'm a librarian at the library of congress. all day here at the library from the national book festival we are recognizing and celebrating the importance of authors and books. the oklibrary of congress does this every year but the truth is, the national book festival is a huge undertaking. it's a huge financial undertaking. and it has been made possible by generous support from our sponsors. you can see who they are in your program and on the video monitors around the convention center.we take it for granted this event will continue to exist so i would ask you to consider making a contribution right now using your cell phone. you can send a text to make a one-time gift that will be r added to your mobile phone bill.. details on the screen on the back of your program, and as soon as you initially making that contribution, please silence cyour cell phone.

>> and now on to the main event, i'd like to introduce cochair of the national book festival, david rubenstein. >>. >>. [applause] we are very honored today to have one of the best-selling authors in the country with us, a person who wrote his first book and is already on the new york times bestseller list. how many read the book after mark how many people are going to read the book after mark how many people are going to >> our special guest is j.d. vance and i will ask him to, now. >> . >> so thank you very much for coming. let me get people who may not know your background little introduction. jd is a native of middletown

ohio . [applause] and a graduate of the middletown high school. he then went into the marines for four years, served iniraq . [applause] and came back, went to ohio state and finished it in two years. then went to yale law school. graduated there as a member of the law journal, worked for a federal judge for a year. he is now in the heinvestment world and based in part in washington dc. >> he is married to a former classmate from yale law school who is here somewhere, maybe on the way, bringing his two month old son. [applause] so if you see a two-month-old son somewhere, that's his son. so halet's start.

surely when you started to write this book, in your wildest imagination you could not have thought you were going to write a new york times bestseller or did you? >> i didn't think i would. >> where did the idea for the book come from? >> it started in law school and the genesis was i was interested in some of the concepts and ideas that i wrote about, specifically this question of upward mobility in the united states and at yale we had to write this thesis by the end of our third year in order to graduate and i wanted to write about the legal and policy implications of social mobility or the lack thereof. and the more that i started talking through the idea and the people that were advising me, the more that i thought, especially my primary advisor, a woman named amy chua who herself is a successful author . >> she's the author of --

>> the author of "battle hymn of the tiger mother". she encouraged me more to bring my personal experiences to bear because she thought i could write something that was intellectually interesting but also personally and emotionally powerful and as i continued to write the book, i want to say i was a little resistant to that at first. i didn't like the idea of opening up my personal life but the more i wrote, the more i realize that i have a unique contribution in that i understood these things from the inside as opposed to an academic degree. >> you have the idea of writing a book, how long did it take you to write the book? >> i was always working on it part-time so i had another job while i was writing the book and it took me 2 and a half years. i started writing in the middle of 2013 and i finished toward the end of 2015. >> were your writing longhand or did you do a computer?

>> i did a computer, my handwriting is terrible. >> as you are writing it, did you have any publisher lined up or did you write it and say i'll get a publisher.>> this is interesting and exemplifies something i write about in the book, the idea of how social connections can have these important benefits. because of amy, when i started to think about making this into a book project, she said let me introduce you to these people i know in the publishing world to one of the people she introduced me to this woman eventually became agent. as i quickly learned when you have an idea and you have somebody like tina advocating for it, the publishing, finding a publisher is relatively easy. that's sort of what happened with me and the hard part was getting into the agents publishing world and once i was there it wasn't so hard to find a publisher. >> sometimes first time authors say it shouldn't be hard to write a book and nc halfway through they say how can i get out of this project?

were you in that category, did you want to abandon it. >> i did want to abandon it, my wife can tell you how miserable i was about that 50 percent way through the wh writing process. >> for me, what was so tough is that once it got about halfway through, obviously it was to late to give up. i couldn't stop writing it. but writing it an additional 40 or 50,000 words should seem so imposing and i realized then what i didn't realize going into the project is that i probably had about a 10 to 1 ratio of words typed two words that made it into the final manuscript. i didn't realize what a long slog it would be until i was halfway through. and yes, i thought to myself would it be possible to get out of this? >> your publisher at some confidence, the initial print run was 10,000. >> so 10,000 isn't 500,000.

but 10,000, that's good for a first author. at what point when the book came out did people say hey, there are enough copies out, we have to print more? x this happened relatively quickly. after >>the book came out. i want to say two or three weeks, maybe. there was an interview i did with a magazine, the american conservative that went viral. a lot of people were sharing it on twitter and facebook and i went to go check my amazon ranking. those of you who have written a book will know your amazon ranking as a way to check in real time how your book is selling so there's a point in my life where i was checking it obsessively, every seven or eight seconds. i go to check my amazon ranking and it says my book is out of stock, will ship in over weekend i realized then that we don't have enough books out there. that's when they started to turn on the proverbial panic button. >> how many ihave been printed? >> i don't know how many

total are in print. i know hard copies, we sold just under 1 million and it's a littleover 1 million if you countdigital copies and audio copies . >> . [applause] now the title, very often authors don't come up with a title right away. was that your idea for the title or where did it come from? >> it came from a conversation with my agent, this woman tina. i wanted the word hillbilly to be in the book title. the reason i wanted that word in the title is because i thought it captured both the sort of particular cultural subsegment i was trying to write about but i also thought that it captured obviously this interesting insider outsider dynamic that existed in my family where my grandmother would say we are hillbilly's and a lot of these other in the lilies, but if anybody else calls you hillbilly, you have to punch them in the nose. it was this interesting word

that always had a textured meeting as i grew alup. so i wanted that word to be in the title. elegy was something that had to take a while before i was comfortable with making it "hillbilly elegy" and i think that was tina's idea to pair elegy with hillbilly and there were a couple reasons for that. >> as the book has become well-known, you are reasonably well-known. can you go to a restaurant without people asking for autographs or is not a problem yet? >> depends on where i'm at. i get noticed back in columbus, i get noticed a fair amount. i get noticed sometimes in dc. i get noticed back in eastern kentucky or southwestern ohio but i was in nashville, i don't know, a week and a half ago and i didn't get noticed once there. it definitely. >> there.d to make a record >> one what has been the reaction of your family, many of the secrets that many people don't want revealed about themselves, ththey seem

to reveal every family secrets, what was the reaction of your family? >> i didn't reveal every family secret. >> you know, it's interesting, i in talking to my family about revealing some of these secrets, i think that i've noticed there's been a slight tone shift from when i started to write the book where it is now. i think people were much more open about spilling the family history on the pages of a book that no one expected anybody to read. i think now, now that we are at the number of copies we sold and people are talking about the book, it may be a little bit more sensitivity but some people definitely say look, it's in the family, we shouldn't air the dirty laundry. some people appreciate that it was an important and worthwhile story to tell, e some people come down in the middle. >> to any say how come i don't get any royalties from

this? they don't say that? >> i haven't met yet maybe i will now especially since this is on c-span. >> let's talk about the book itself, i read it and enjoyed it a great deal. i would say i think it success is due to three things. one is i think the writing style is crisp and clear . very to the point, not a lot of excess verbiage. second, your personal story is extraordinary which is the kind of thing that is almost like a novel, hard to believe it's true and third, the relationship betweenwhat's going on in the country, the opioid crisis , unemployment in certain parts of the country so let's go through each of these first. >> first, the writing style. are you a gifted writer in college, where did you get this chris and clear writing style? >> i think definitely lost school helped a lot in that regard because one of the things they teach is you

don't write with a lot of excess verbiage. be clear and concise but also engaging so thinking about how to write as a lawyer, how to tread out the excess words was helpful. but it's seems to me if i was a talented writer, always. i don't necessarily think i am but it's funny because there was an eighth grade biography that i had to write and when my family still have this biography and it's interesting because it's obviously similar to what's in "hillbilly elegy" and they will pass it around and go you was such a great writer when he was 14 years old and then when my wife picks up that and read that she will go your family is not being honest, you were not that good of a writer when you were 14. i don't know, i think that law school helped. there's a story that i tell in the book where the first big writing assignment i had in law school i handedit in and i was proud of it ..and this law school professor

handed it back and circled this big section and said this is our vomit of sentences masquerading as a paragraph. if you are asking if i was a talented writer, he would say no. >> today, having a first book that successful, normally publishers will go to the author and say you are ernest hemingway, you are great, let's have another book right away and the sooner you get it out the better. really they are after you to write another book, are you writing one now? >> i'm thinking about writing a book and i think i eventually will. i view on this is that it's not something i'm trying to undertake tomorrow. >> so if i write another book , it will be a couple years from now as opposed to immediately. >> eventually there will be a paperback edition and will you edit it or change it, or will you go after it the same way? >> i will go at it the same way. i would like to have a chapter to contextualize some of the political salience that people have attributed

because when i started writing this at 2013 i had no idea that it would be attached to the election in this really friendly to me, bizarre way. so i think i would like to write at least a little bit about that because i haven't written a ton about that but otherwise, it's the same thing. >> before the paperback comes out or maybe after, there's supposed to be a movie. >> ron howard is i guess reducing the movie or ft directing as well. who is going to play you? >> i don't know. the thing about this is that i wanted to be somebody who's good-looking no not so good-looking that people are disappointed when they meet me. but yes, the question i had real trouble meeting is who really fits into that, not too warm, not too cold category. >> i'm sure you will find

somebody, let's go to why the second part of why it's successful and that's your life story. for those who may not have read, but i want to give away a fair bit, where you born? >> i was born in middletown ohio. >> your biological mother and father were married at the time? >> okay, and did they get divorced shortly thereafter. >> very shortly, i think i was meeting a year old when they got divorced. >> so your biological mother was raising you from the early years. >> and then you had a close relationship your maternal grandfather and lymaternal grandmother. >> what was their name? >> i call them mamma and pat, bonnie and jim. >> is that a elderly type word or was it unique to your family. >> i think it's definitely common in the broader culture. it's not exclusive i've learned to buy hillbilly culture. but noit's definitely something that people from that region disproportionately call their

grandparents memo and pass on. >> people who live on the east coast would say what hillbilly about ohio, that's the center of the united states. you discovered your families roots were from kentucky. >> they were part of this massive, this migration from places like eastern kentucky, west virginia to the industrial midwest and when they moved, they brought a lot of their cultural attributes with them. even though my family lived in southwestern ohio, he traveled back to eastern kentucky a lot because i spent so much time with my grandparents, i spent a lot of my years in eastern kentucky and it felt like that was a real homeland. that's a common attitude. folks that wrote country music songs about this, there are stories of alerts to mine where people who grew up in the industrial midwest grew up in michigan or ohio mfelt like their home was in west virginia because they fit so much of their lives in those

places and that's where their family was from. >> so you are growing up and you have a stepsister or a full center. >> a stepsister. different dad, same mom. >> all of you raised by your single mother and how did she support herself? >> mom , i remember became a nurse sometime after, maybe i was eight or nine. for a couple years she was a nurse and i write about, those were good times economically. we were struggling during that period. before then, i don't know. she worked odd jobs, my grandparents helped out and certainly one of the stories in the book is that after mom was no longer working in nursing, things were tough or our family economically and more important, they were taught socially. >> your mother as you are writing your book was married

or had male relationships with people living with her, four or five or six different times. wasn't that disconcerting to see a different man in the house all the time? >> it was an unstable childhood from the perspective of people coming in and out of our lives and i ro think ofi didn't realize till i was older what effect that was having. i didn't like it eawhen i was a kid, i didn't like that i would be friends with this guy or feel like this guy was becoming a father figure and all of a sudden he was out of our lives. i knew that was common, i knew friends were tgoing through the same thing and that none of them liked it either. i didn't appreciate the effect that it was having on me until i wasolder . >> at some point as you write in your book you developed a relationship with your biological father. you lived with him for a while but that was not as

pleasant an experience as you thought it would be. >> it was pleasant in the sense that he had his life together, living with my stepmom and they had a happy home d life. i was looking for that, searching for that family stability in the eighth grade when that happened i also realized that i had become incredibly attached to my grandmother. when i was living with mom is again, even when my sister was living as a kid, we spent a ton of time with our grandparents and his mom struggled with problems we spent more and more time with our grandparents. there was this weird moment where i was living with my dad and i recognized that he had a normal home as people understood it, but i felt so desperate to get back to my grandmother's house and live with her and that's eventually what i did.i don't think i realized until that moment that in my own mind and heart, it had become

my cheap caretaker. >> you lived with your father for a while, wasn't as happy and experience as you hoped. you moved in with your maternal grandmother and grandfather. >> he passed away. >> he was very close to you so the shock of his passing away, how did that? >> it affected me i think in all the ways that the death of a parent affects a young kid. papaw because of the situation growing up, because of the revolving door of father figures, papaw was the closest thing i had to dad during those formative years and he was the person who took care of things, he was the person who made sure we had all the things the kids need and he was an emotional support for me and my sister and my grandfather. i had the sense that if papaw was around, things would be taken care of. he was the person call us when drama was happening, the person who never lost his temper. even tran 12, she had a

temper and papaw didn't. i think it inaffected me and a number of different and negative ways, but the way it affected me most of all is what came after it. i understood instinctively that papaw was the glue that held the family together and i realized in a non-instinctive and obvious way when he wasn't there, just what would happen. >> so you lived with your mother for a while but at one point, she is violent with you and very difficult to deal with and she had a drug problem as you recount in the book and you recount an experience where the police came and save you from your mother, is that fair? >> i think about this story a lot because i wonder, i was 12 or 13 and i always wonder if maybeit wasn't quite as dangerous as i remember .

i think in part, that's because i'm a lot closer to mom now and in some ways, people try to remember things in a way that reflects fondly on people that they love and i certainly love mymom and we are doing well in our relationship . i was terrified. i thought that ndwe were going to die and i thought that mom was going to try to kill us and the car was traveling fast and she was certainly, didn't seem especially stable so i got out of the car and ran and eventually found this woman who called the police and the police arrested mom and she was charged with domestic violence. that was obviously a pretty traumatic moment. there's noother way to cut it . >> when that happened, did you live with your grandmother or go back and live with your mother after

that incident? >> for a time i lived with my grandmother. i was always living with papaw for weeks and months at a time even when things were going well though it wasn't that much ofa departure of our normal routine , but i lived with papaw for a while and eventually moved back in with mom. that was the way things went. >> when you were growing up, i didn't have the experiences you did but i didn't have the ability to recall what happened when i was 12 or 10 or nine, how do you recall that and did you have documents or how did you know these incidents so well? >> this is where being able to rely on your family helps. a lot of this stuff i tried to cross reference as much as possible with my aunt or my sister or my mom, my dad. what happened here, here's the draft, here's the manuscript of this story and

what am i leaving out, what am i missing, what haven't i remembered correctly? going back to how the family reacted, that's one of the reasons they reacted well is because i tried to make them part of the writing process. this wasn't from my memory onto the page, i tried to make it a family memoir in that sense but as i said in the introduction, i'm sure that things aren't perfect but they are certainly how i remember them and i think that they are pretty well documented as much as you can with what is right merrily more . >> you point out your grandmother died as well, fairly traumatic. were you the time that she died? >> this is a few months before i left for iraq in 2005. >> you were living with her, getting ready. >> i lived with her old all of high school and left for the marines from her house. >> you were filling out applications in your book for college and either you

thought you couldn't afford college or you work sure you are ready, what was the reason you didn't go to college out of high school? >> it was both. i didn't feel ready for it. i had enough maturity to recognize this was maybe my one real opportunity to have anything in the way of a good job or good career and that if i screw this up, that would be it. that would meet be me blowing my one chance and i didn't want to take it for granted and i thought i was in this position as a person where if i went to college i feel like i would have taken advantage of it. the cost part was a significant issue as well. it wasn't just the cost, obviously i knew i'd have to take out all these loans and pell grants and things like that that i'd be able to take advantage of that even with that i knew it would be a significant amount of debt to d incur but it was more the logistical side of it that made college seemed so imposing.

filling out the financial aid paperwork, what is your dad's annual income, what is your dad's address west and mark at that time i hadn't spoken to my legal father in six or seven years and finding that information would have required a certain amount of detective work. there were these pages to sign off on these massive loans and my grandmother who had graduated from high school and me, it seemed imposing and in some ways terrifying to go through this process that no one in my family had sigone through. and i didn't feel comfortable doing it myself. >> so you sent out walk down the street and go to the marine recruiter? >> that's a simple version of what happened. there were six kids in my generation of grandchildren, my two older cousins and my two younger cousin and of the six of us, three of us

enlisted and both of the older cousins passed. i was encouraged pretty strongly by my cousin was in the marine corps. she said if you are worried about how you are going to pay for school and more importantly, you are worried about whether you are ready for college, join the marine corps. you will get out of town, see different stuff, gain financial independence and you should think about doing that. >> so you signed up for the marine corps. did your family told you that was a good idea? >> it's definitely a patriotic community and a patrioticfamily. the people were proud of me but they were not happy . i guess i signed up 2003. we had just invaded iraq. we had been involved in afghanistan for a while. there was apprehension, justifiably so about what going into the marine corps went. they reacted very negatively so i think in some ways he framed my decision to go to

the marine corps almost as a betrayal. that you are leaving me, leavingme to take care of myself, you could get hurt . i think that was obviously very hard it was also why i needed to do it. >> you went to basic training and what was that like western mark you couldn't get through basic training? >> i was never afraid that i couldn't get through, maybe in high school i was afraid of the physical demands but a drill instructor told me, if you think those drill instructors are going to be mean, they will be nothing like that grandma of yours. i thought that as long as i could physically cut it , the psychological part would be fine and i'd be able to make it and that was true.marine corps boot camp is challenging but it's also in a weird way kind of fun. maybe it's stockholm syndrome but i know marines who enjoyed their camp experience and i was no different. >> your grandmother

recounting in your book, she had language, did that rub off on you? she never embarrassed you by using those words around you? >> >> but it's like ingrained in me and i definitely don't always succeed. >> you get some basic training and you go over to iraq. were you afraid you would come back in one piece or you would

not sure he would survive? >> i think anybody when you're about to deploy is what about whether they will come back in one piece. the thing to remember is i had a malaise, military occupation specialty wherewith lost some people in my mos to combat deaths and injuries but it wasn't quite, i wasn't thinking quite as much about the dangers may be i would've been if i was working in the industry, for example. i was worried about it by also tried to talk myself up and recognize it will be dangerous, it will be more dangerous than but i down the street but will probably end up, most marines into the back okay. >> for four years you leave, then you decide you want to go to college. you felt you were ready for it but you would then four years older than many of your college contemporaries. why do youou decide to go to oho state? did you consider any of the

place? >> a few fans out there, go box. [applause] i think it's possible to sort of make these decisions seem more rational than they were. the reason i wanted to go to ohio state is because i grew up loving ohio state and a lot of my friends had gone there. i was not nearly as thoughtful about my college decision as i should've been. i had a great experience and i'm glad i went there, but it was basically like i , so at ohio state. igeis wasn't thinking as smartly about as i should've been. >> normally people go to college for four years, and you seem to get to ohio state in two years. how did you get to ohio state in two years? >> you take a lot of classes, you could during thehe summer ad you transfer credits that you gained during the marine corps over to ohio state. those three things were enough to enable me to cut a couple years off.

>> how did you support yourself? wherewith the money come from from ohio state? >> a combination of things. i was no longer in the marine corps size no longer getting a salary. although a bit of savings, a little bit of debt that i incurred. i borrowed some subsidized loans. had some pell grants at osu. had the g.i. bill which i was trying to say from law school but it used some of the g.i. bill during college and then i worked jobs during college. so multiple different sources. >> so you graduate engineers and then you decide you want to go to law school. but as you point out there are not as many people going to let say yale or harvard from ohio state. there are some but how did you happen to say go to yale law school as opposed to ohio state law school or some other school

in thear midwest? >> another think why wasn't thinking strategically about it. i applied to a few law schools. i got into them and sort was thinking about just going to one of those schools, and one of my best friends, he was the best man at my wedding actually who himself was a lawyer said look, if you have gotten good great and you thinking get into good place, this is 2009 right after the great recession, he's like i've got friends from law school who are struggling to find work. you should try to get into the best school you can because that will be a best insurance policy against unemployment. taking off a bit of and then reapplying and that's what i applied to yale. >> you were an average of school student but in college you did much better. how did you change from a mediocre average student to a, great student? >> average is putting it charitably in high school. a couple of things.

i was a more mature person. this goes back to me being ready for college in a psychological way. i appreciated it was this opportunity as opposed to thehe responsibility someone foisted upon them. i tried harder. paying for it and sing that debt bill go up and up and up maybe give me some sense of the fact i was lucky to be able to go there. i also thought a lot about my grandma when i was in college. this is a woman who left school i think when she is 14 to come north to ohio. should not have many educational opportunities. she was super supersmart and i just thought to myself if she could sacrifice all those things to give me to place like this, i should take advantage of it and i should try harder. >> so you go to yale law school. yeah law school is about the hardest law school to get into in the united states, very small law school. many people go there from harvard, yale, princeton, some

account of colleges. did you feel out of place? >> i was the only ohio state grabbed at yale. it was weird to me because i realized they were high schools, preparatory schools where there were more students from the high school at yale law school than the were my university which struck me as weird. it was a culture shock. it was more of a culture shock that anyplace i'd ever been to more of a culture shock than the marine corps, more than ohio state. it was sort of astonishing just a different the expectations in the backgrounds were from some of my classmates, relative to where i came from. >> another person who went to yale law school, bill clinton came from arkansas and used to take a lot of pride in his eye from arkansas, sit a great state and so forth. did you say i'm a hillbilly from kentucky and ohio and a different but i misguided you

guys? >> i don't know i have against myself --nt introduced myself by saying i'm a hillbilly from ohio, how are you? i was a pretty strong ohio partisan even in undergrad. i think everyone i mean in law school. everyone knew where i was from, but i don't know if i use that precise phrase. >> how did you do at yale law school? we academically at the top, the middle or the bottom? >> i did okay. i don't think i was at the top. i think my wife was at the top which is why she was cooking for the chief justice. i didn't do as well as i know that. the weird thing about yale for those of you know these law schools is they don't give traditional grades. it's hard to know where you rank relative to your peers. my sense is i was doing fine. i wasn't at the bottom of the pack but i wasn't at the top. comfortable with that. >> you wrote your way onto the yale law journal which is what

the most risky just things you do at jill law school and then did you decide to end to practice law orou court a what d you decide you wanted to do? >> my wife and i had the opportunity to go to the eastern district of kentucky -- >> you met your wife, same class? where is she is your wife here somewhere? i don't see you here. i thought she was coming. where is she? >> there she is. [applause] >> okay. >> so you matter and you and same class? >> we were in the same class. we had an opportunity to click on the east condition of kentucky, we work for different judges but in covington over the river from cincinnati. it wass, an opportunity to go aa clerk for a federal judge but the close to home and work on things that we were both will interesting to us. >> is that most of your life trying to escape kentucky and then you went back. >> i don't know is trying to escape kentucky sot much as a

chaotic home i grew up in. i've always loved the places that he came from and always wanted to go back. it definitely was a really exciting and it really could you get we both work for really good people. sometimes people get stuck with that judges but we both worked for great people and had a great year. >> as i sit at the beginning there were three reasonsop why e book is successful. one is it's very well written, very precise and a good read. secondly, the life story is almost like a novel so it's very interesting. but the third is one of the reasons the book has become so popular because as you point out yourself, the world has changed since you can see the writing the book andon now what you wroe about the scene is one of the problems of her country which we have a lot of drug abuse, opioid abuse, unemployment, particularly said in the midwest and a lot of people that you come from.

let's talk about that for a while. let's talk about the opioid problem. you growing up you point out in your book drug abuse was a problem in your area and you think it's gotten worse why do you think it is so bad? >> well, it was something us are going up. i remember when addiction hit our family and i found out that mom was addicted to prescription pain pills as we call them back in. i didn't understand it. i didn't understand what anybody would be addicted to pain pills. it wasn't common, this was back in the mid-'90s. the problem had not gone mainstream as it hasi now. in 2017 we sit here and we talk opioid epidemic which is a really a nationwide crisis. i did feel in some ways i got an early insight into what would later become a crisis. why has it gotten worse? are a ton of different reasons and explanations. one is, i think to be honest, a lot of these drugs were marketed

asf nonaddictive and they were addicted so people got hooked on them and it cost a lot of problems. i think you have a significant over prescription problem in some of these areas where, i was just in southeastern ohio a few months ago talking to some folks who were dealing with this and the coming that with high school kids used to hang out and get into the parent liquor cabinet or beer, now don't get into grandmas medicine cabinet pass around drugs. that's a different kind of problem. i also think it is in some ways a consequence of some really negative social problems thatt exist here if you have domestic violence and have a lot of family stability, if you have unemployment than people do eventually find some way to deal with that. maybe 50 years ago they dealt with it with alcohol and now they'ree getting with a substane is much more addictive. >> huge largely seem to have avoided the opry problem and you

write as i recall maybe some use of marijuana something but not really anything that was addicted. how did you avoid that in the environment in which you grew up? >> grandma was very cognizant of the problems of addiction and was really, really strict about this stuff. if she found out we were smoking a cigarette or weed, anything to drink, mama would fly off the handle. i think she appreciated just how bad addiction could be in that clearly had this role in a family. this is the thing that really ruined her life life to the fi0 years of her marriage was alcoholism and then it was ruining the life of one of her kids. i was very much on guard. almost obsessively so. i'm one of these people who don't like to take ibuprofen for headache because unlike really uncomfortable with the idea of putting foreign substances in my body because i've seen addiction trap a lot of people. i got really sick when i was at ohio state. i had mono and they gave me this

synthetic opioid because i had to take some medicine. anyway, i was in hospital at ohio state, and i remember calling basically everyone in my family saying i know why mama didn't like us to take this step because it is fantastic. [laughing] so i just think being on guard about that stuff -- >> what about alcohol? have you avoided uncle? >> no. i haven't avoided alcohol. [laughing] i certainly have never felt that i've been addicted to alcohol. when asked what the doctor on one of these once or twice a week type people. but no, i've never felt especially addicted to anything except for chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. [laughing] >> let's talk about unemployment. unemployment. as you point out many people left kentucky in place like that to go north to look for jobs but those have been hollowed out. you see a lot of unemployment in the kind of background pic can you describe whether it's

getting better or worse than what's being done or can be done about it? >> it is getting better the past couple of years because the economy has picked up a bit, but it don't think improved significantly over where it was 30 or 40 years ago. what i mean is that the number of people that the coal industry with a steel mill industry employed in let's say the 1950s and 60s, that hasn't returned. it's not maybe as bad as it was but a do think you are seeing a really long-term significant economic shift in some of these areas and it's something unless you think policymakers were a little blind to. everybody just thought the economy would adjust, folks would get different jobs, moving professions. but what'sth happened is seen a lot of communities get decimated and that's one of the undercurrents of the book. what is there to do about it? there are i think a lot of different things that we could do about it.

the first is that when a significant problem with the fact that you are effectively given a choice when you graduate from high school between going and working in a fast a job are going and getting a four-year college education. we should provide more pathways than that. it's not surprising with those of the only two pathways that you see people going industry directions -- [applause] but it also think we have to think more constructively about regional economic development. the way this is going for the past ten or 20 years is i'm a local municipality, i offer someone a tax credit to set up a restaurant in my hometown., that's great, the restaurants are fantastic but that's not the long-term economic review love that has to happen and i think it's something basically all levels of policymakers have to be thinking differently than they are right now. >> somebody writes a book that says successful is yours and about the subjects you deal

with, at some point somebody from the democratic national committee or the republican national committee or some political entity will say you are a great candidate to be a member of congress, governor, center, and maybe something even higher. thought about and have yet opportune to run for something? >> i think we're out of time, right? thank you. [laughing] >> so you would say, you wouldn't preclude anything from happening? >> certainly not. you know, certainly when that progression is exactly right, when you have a book that is successful, people from various political parties come to you and ask you'd be interested in these things. >> do talk to these people who have these jobs like these jobs? >> i don't think that i have. couple of members of congress, not about me running but in this environment the actual enjoy what you do? and they say i really like

working on policy. the problem is we don't do any of that. so no. >> leaving aside whether you would run for something, because the platform you now have is so great, you canof be a spokesman aboutyo alcoholism, unemploymen, opioid addiction. are you going to make a part of your core talking about these issues, or do you want to not be seen as a spokesman for these issues? >> i don't know that it what to be seen as a spokesman for these issues buthe i think now that i have this platform i might as will do something with it productive other than just going talk about the book. there areel other issues that ae worth talking about. i've tried to be a constructive participant in some of the policy debates during the health care reform debate a few months ago. i went on capitol hill i tried to talk to folks about how this might affect the opioid crisis, this is mike -- is out might affect some of people back home.

i try to be constructive as possible but we live in an especially nonconstructiveme ti. you have to be careful in smart and you have to recognize that sometimes even when you try to be careful in smart you are not being careful or smart. >> when you go to talk to members of congress or get involved with congressional staff people do they just want a picture with you or your autograph or do they actually listen to what you say? >> well, depends. depends on the member and defense of some of the staff members. but no, i found generally speaking i become may be more about our political process writ large and civil came out just talking to folks. i feel more optimistic about individual members and their staff. i think by and large people want to make a difference and care about the policy and care about what effect is going to have. it's just we happen to live in a political time where it's hard

to translate interest in policy to constructive accomplishments. >> people who mightal be called hillbillies or hillbilly culture, , are they proud of yor book for having exposed some of the challenges they have come or are the upset for having exposed some of the challenges they have? >> opinionss differ. there are people think i'm basically a a traitor and you e my guts. there are people out there who think thatt i've shared a lot of important issues and the appreciate it. the thing i hear most people back home when a a going talk about the book or just when i hear people when the running to be on the street is that they appreciate that the book has talked about these problems in a way that you like wasn't talked about before. that nobody really wrote the story from the inside. nobody really talked about what is a a like to grow up in a household with a lot of instability, a lot of addiction?

a household where he really worried about whether you can pay for college or even pay for more on the middle things. that is the part that is most gratifying to me but i think it's a region that is really large and diverse and so you have opinions that are probably as avs any large population. >> what is the most frequent questions you get asked? you on the speaking circuit and on tv, a country but to see them in. what is a question you get most quickly asked by audiences about your book or your background? >> the question most quickly asked, and it's probably how my family reacted to the book. that's something people are curious about. i get asked about how my mom is doing and the edges she's doing really well. >> she's not married now, living in a while. >> she's living back home, doing well. she's been clean for very long time. in some ways while mom may not be ready to play this role, i'm not going to force it upon her,

she's a really good example of what can happen when even after five or six times you get knocked off the horse of addiction the back and relapse, that it's impossible to climb back out and find the right support and to make another go at it. that's something i really admire about mom. she's incredibly tenacious. [applause] >> that she now have business gas this is the mother of j. d. that? >> she does not. >> what about your biological father? do you have contact with him? >> yeah, i just got a text message before i went appear. dad and i are still close and still talk quite a bit. he's doing pretty well. he's a great guy and i think he and i most often talk about his grandson and that's what is most

interested in and i think that's true of a lot of of grandparents. >> you talk about, you grew up largely with your sister. what is she doing? >> my sister has three kids back home in middletown, has been married for 20 years or so, and well.ng i think that what lindsay and i wanted to really accomplish, like what we thought of as success in our lives, was being able to get our kids the severely and the comfort and the sense of security that we didn't have as kids. she has successfully done that for almost 20 years. our oldest kid is 18. i have done that for three months. [laughing] i am hopeful i get there, too. >> and today do you find your friends at my school, did you laugh at your jokes more than they did before? do they treat you differently? how the people you grew up treat you now that you are so famous? and wealthy? do people ask you for money?

>> sometimes people ask me for money but that's not a common occurrence. there are definitely some people laugh louder at my jokes but my real friends did not laugh louder. one of the really good things about having a successful book or what a successful book and it is you realize people who are loyal to you no matter what and don't like to get too big for your britches as we say back home, those of the people i really latch onto. >> leaving aside your potential political career, right now you are not practicing law but you in what i would call the highest calling ofon mankind, private equity. so why did you choose to go into what i will call the venture capital space, an area of venture capital. why did you go into that area and you doingte it from you from that is based here and also living in ohio? >> that is right, and what i

find so interesting about what i'm doing now is if it's done well, it can actually help create amazing new products and amazing new companies and amazing new jobs that didn't exist before. one of the things i realize in law school, and i think i came into this with my veil behind the eyes that's been lifted, the people who i think really frankly call the shots in our economic system are those who are figuring out where capital goes. i think when i realized that i thought to myself i'd like to be a guy who is trying to figure out how to get capital into good places where it will do a lot of good and create a lot of value, not just for investors book for people on the receiving end. >> some people to write first books -- [applause] >> some people write a book, margaret mitchell, ralph ellison, their first book is so successful that they have and hd time writing ale second book, ty

get writers block because they think nothing can be as good as the first book. you don't worry about that problem? >> i don't know. i don't know my book was that could settle know if any follow-up will be measured well or poorly compared to it. it was very successful and i think i would be needed if i expected any of the book to be a successful but i will let people decide. >> what do you want to do with life? you are a bit of a role model for people coming out of your background. role model do you feel more responsibility to look like a certain way? to feel you shouldas get back to your community a certain way? half-light your life changed as a result of this book? >> i feel a certain responsibility when i go on tv not to make my entire community seem like an idiot. one of the things i have not appreciated but i've accepted as

reality is a lot of people seem as a spokesperson for the white working class. a lot of times i'm on tv saying what does the trompe l'oeil feel about this or that issue? that's unfair. i don't think any person can speak with that many people are for the trouble voter writ large, but what i e i try to ds recognize some people seey me that representative sockeye not to sound like a total buffoon when i go on tv. that's one way i think exact change. crazy, right? a year and half ago i was not sitting in an auditorium in front of hundreds of people. it's kind of impossible to describe how my life has changed. h it's changed in a way that a persons life changes when they go from just sitting at home eating pints of ice cream and watching netflix to sitting here in front of hundreds of people. >> like the peopleat the presidt called you and set a major book and you really typify the kind of voter i appeal to or you have heard that reaction?

>> i've never heard that from president trump. i have heard people who work in the white house who said something similar to that. but no, i've never gotten a phone call from president trump. still waiting. >> today you would say you are a very happy person. you have a child, a wife, your mother and father are doing well so you're a, very happy person today and the experience of the book is make a your life better? >> yes. the book is changing my wife life in a wiggly but a positive way. >> i thought it was a great book. i highly recommend it to those who have not ready yet and those have read it once, read it again. i think it's instructive, well-written and want to thanko you for very interesting conversation. >> thanks, david. [applause] >> you are watching tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors of your weekend. booktv, television for serious readers.

>> this weekend on booktv we are live from national for the seven festival of books featuring national book award finalist. for a complete schedule visit booktv.org. you can follow us on social media or on twitter, facebook and instagram. our handle is @booktv. also airing this weekend on our afterwards program festering craig shirley talks about the life and career of newt gingrich with former virginia congressman tom davis. also, national book award-winning author ta-nehisi coates examines race, the obama presidency and the election of donald trump.

that's all this weekend on booktv. it's 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books, television for serious readers. >> here's a look at some of the current best-selling nonfiction books according to parnassus books in nashville, tennessee.

>> some of these authors have or will be appearing on booktv and you can watch them on our website, tv.org. >> good evening everyone. how are