>> 6,000 people. them a good wage. but a lot of the problems they thought they were escaping in jackson have just presented themselves in middletown, ohio, too. so you see a lot of the same problems that exist in jackson, from the family breakdown to exist in jackson, from the heroin epidemic to homelessness, joblessness now characteristic of this part of the country. i wouldn't say it's destitute, just because there's still a lot going on in southwestern ohio, so folks are still able to find decent jobs. the poverty rate isn't quite as high, and unemployment rate is

not quite as high. but for folks like us, it's pretty similar, right? there are a lot of the social ills in southern ohio that do not look that different from jackson. brian: so "hillbilly elegy" -- are there hills in both places? j.d.: yes, but they are bigger in jackson. [chuckling] j.d.: is in the heart of -- jackson is in the heart of the appalachian mountains. middletown is in a plateau. so, if you have ever been to cincinnati, which is the closest big city to middletown, it is very hilly, almost mountainous, but not like kentucky and tennessee. brian: when did you leave the area permanently? j.d.: i left in 2003 to join the military. i was in the marines. this was right after we invaded iraq. i enlisted in april of 2003.

i believe we invaded in march of 2003. i was in north carolina. spent a of time in iraq. the war was the engine that brought me out of where i grew up. facade going back to visit family, i have not lived there for more than a few months at a time. brian: what years were you in the marines? j.d.: 2003-2007. i did a four-year tour in the marines. brian: what years were you at ohio state university? 2007-2009. i went to ohio state for a couple of years. i majored in political science and philosophy at ohio state. brian: what years were you at yale law school? j.d: i was in yale from 2010-2013. i pretty much went straight there. i graduated late summer from ohio state and i couldn't start and the next law school term had already started. that was the biggest chunk of time where i stayed with my aunt and uncle. brian: what year did you move to

san francisco? j.d.: 2015. so about 1.5 years ago. brian: what law firm argue in and what kind of law do you ?ractice j.d.: i am an investor in san francisco and i practiced law in boston. we have a big washington, d.c., office. i did a lot of regulatory work in washington, d.c. and i left for the technology world in san francisco i ran a company for a short time in san francisco. now i am at an investment firm. brian: when did you get married? j.d.: 2014. brian: any kids? j.d.: no. two very large dogs, but no kids. [chuckling] rian: where does your mom live? j.d.: still in eastern kentucky.

brian: has your mother read the book? j.d.: she has. yes, she has. and, you know, it is top, right? it is not necessarily the most flattering. it is the sort of thing that, you know, when mama and i talked about it for the first time -- it was a few weeks ago that we really talked about the book and what was in it and the story that it told. it was one of the best conversations i had with my mom in 15 years. it is hard for my mom to recognize the way her life affected me and my sisters. but the way that her parents life affected her. this, i grow up like think you grow up pretty guilty anything a lot of the things are your fault. and one of the things i hope to do in the book, that hopefully i did an ok job on, was to show this in a multi-generational context. some of the problems i had growing up were not all mom's fault. in some ways, this was an inheritance of the family. it was just as hard on her as it was on me. brian: how much did alcohol play in your mom's life?

j.d.: in mom's life, alcohol was not that big of a story except his dad was an alcoholic. he quit drinking when i was born. i thought of him as an almost perfect guy, never having a temper. but he was a pretty mean drunk before i was born. so, it was interesting to compare to the opinion i had. drugs was a really big part of mom's life. and a big part of my family story. she, like a lot of people, got a taste for prescription narcotics. it is something that really dominated our lives and affected our lives in a lot of different ways. it is something i am proud and happy to say that it is controlgotten it under and things are going pretty well right now. but it is a story that is too

common, where drugs move in and really messed up these families and a lot of different ways. brian: what is the story where she tried to commit suicide in a car? j.d.: when i was maybe 10 or 11 , she had recently lost her job. i did not know at the time, but that is really when she started to use drugs. her marriage was falling apart. we were living in a rural part of the state, as her marriage was falling apart, and we were moving to middletown. it is not exactly urban, but it's a lot more than a street line. she crashed a car into a telephone pole. she went to a hospital. she tried to commit suicide, which was very hard for me to hear as her son. you always think what could i have done differently. it's a big part of growing up in

.hat environment you always wonder what could make things a little bit better? -- better. host: how old are you? guest: 32. host: how old is your mother? guest: 55. brian: let's start with bob. who was bob? j.d.: a stepfather i had. it was mom's third husband. he was and is my legal father. when i was five or six years old, my biological father decided he would give me up for adoption for complicated reasons. he and i are close now and we have reconnected. bob, who was mom's husband at the time, was there when my biological father when the give me up, so he became my legal father and i took his name. i became james david himmel. that is not my name anymore.

he was around for a couple of years. like a lot of the men we were exposed to, he did not stick around. he did not become my dad. he became just another guy who came into the picture and left after the couple of years. brian: who was chip? j.d.: she was one of moms boyfriends and lived together for a year and a half i would say. he was a reasonable guy. he worked as a police officer and he had a lot of the attitudes that were common in this area. had some connection to the south because of his mannerisms and the way he conducted himself. he was a nice guy. he drank a lot. he wasn't abusive to me. but you know, at real story of a lot of these guys it is they would come in and they would go out. it was not that they were bad guys in and of themselves. they were just not people you can depend upon and that was the

with as kids. up you could not really depend on these guys. brian: who was steve? j.d.: steve was the boyfriend who came after chip. again, he was a nice guy. my sister and i always said we wanted mom to marry steve, but after a year, he was gone. brian: who was matt? j.d.: matt was probably my favorite of all of my stepdad's or moms boyfriends. a younger guy, everly good human being, cared a lot about me and my sister. during the worst part of our lives, when mom's addiction problem landed her in rehab, matt was the person who took care of us in a lot of ways. checking in on us, making sure we had food to eat, making sure we were going to school, when there was not an adult presence in our lives. matt and i still keep in contact, actually.

mom and matt broke it off after a few years but matt and i are still pretty close and he is doing well. i am happy we are keeping an touch. brian: ken? j.d.: an interesting story. interesting maybe not the right word. i was living with mom and matt. i came home one day and mom told me she was getting married. i figured she was getting married to matt, but she was actually getting married to this man i had never met, ken. who was her boss. what i learned she had started a relationship with ken and we would be moving in. i was moved from matt's house. ken, again, was just one of perfectly nice guys and was not abusive in any way, but he was just one of these people who would come into our lives and go. brian: how many times did your mom get married? j.d.: she has been married five

times over the course of her life. four times over the course of my life. brian: is she married now? j.d.: good question. i believe the answer is no. brian: what does she do for a living? believee works as -- i she takes care of elderly folks. she works in various -- basically, a home health nurse. it is good for her. good for her because she is clean and she is working hard. brian: who was me-maw? j.d.: she was the matriarch of our family and the savior of my own life. she was my mom's mom. it is pretty common in these big eastern kentucky families. her reach was broader than a lot of people's grandparents were, so she was the person who made sure that i had a safe and stable home when my mother could not provide it. she was the person who made sure i had exposure to the life lessons and the people i needed

to have exposure to so i did not completely fall through the cracks. and you know, she was this gun-toting, had 19 handguns, cussed up a storm. she was not the sort of stay-at-home in bad weather grandmother. she was a powerful and perceptive figure that made sure that i had the exposure to the things that i needed to ignore to have a good life. brian: pa-paw? j.d.: her husband. and even though because of his drinking, they were separated, they never got divorced. i think they just really did not believe in it. so pa-paw, we went through the revolving door of maternal partners, but he was the one man we could rely on and the best father anybody could ask for. when he died, i stood up at his funeral and said he was the best father anyone could ask for.

he played that role in our lives . he was the person who would fix up a car, provide us extra spending money, that was his role. he stood in for the father that my sister and i did not have. again, he was this gruff old guy from eastern kentucky. he didn't in some ways fit in in southern ohio. he definitely belong from eastern kentucky and felt more comfortable there. he was just a great guy. brian: what is "mountain dew mouth"? [laughter] mouth is aain dew term that people give to the dental problems that happen when you drink too much sugary soda. it is not something that people like to talk about and people are unfairly stereotyped for having terrible teeth. it is true that, among poor families, kids have dental because they are given sugary

soda before they should be. so i believe i was a baby when pepsi was put into my bottle and my grandma said, you are going to rot this kids teeth out. we didn't know what we were supposed to do. we did not know the behaviors we had to have to prevent premature dental problems. it's not that the people who put the pepsi in my bottle were bad people. they just really didn't know that they would have long-term health consequences. luckily, my grandma did. brian: what is a hillbilly? what is an elegy? j.d.: a hillbilly is somebody who has a connection to appalachia or if you are from southern ohio. you either have family or a special kinship to the region. it is a term that is pejorative. if somebody used it outside of the family, i would be offended.

but in our family, we use it as a term of endearment. as my ma-maw said, nobody can call you a hillbilly except me. when we say it, it's ok. an elegy is a sad song or poem. the book -- i called it "hillbilly elegy" because in some ways, this is the sad story of people who have come from appalachia. maybe the optimism that my grandparents had when they were 15 or 20 years old has not necessarily panned out. years later, their family has a lot of the problems they hope their family wouldn't have when they escaped from eastern kentucky poverty. brian: who named the book? j.d.: a combination of me and my publisher agent. it is something we talked a lot about. it is not something i was especially attached to, at first. elegy is not a word i would use

a lot in my language growing up. the more i thought about what it meant, the more i recognized that it really is the story of my family, these hillbillies, those that came from it eastern kentucky to southern ohio and the sadness that characterize their lives. brian: as you sit here talking about this book, you know there's something missing. i mean, we are not getting what is in this book because of? there is language that would remove the bark from the tree. [laughing] j.d.: it is full of colorful language because the people who are groped around use a lot of colorful language and other cuss words. someone once told me that my ma-maw had the mouth of a sailor, only worse. i don't filter that. i don't try to hide that. it is definitely just the

way we spoke. brian: what do you think they would think if they read the book? j.d.: i think they would love the book. i tried to write a book they would be proud of for that reason. ma-maw was very open about the fact that there were problems. she was, i say this again and again, she was very perceptive and recognize that people did not like to talk about these problems, thinking that you do not want to open up family history or talk about these problems. she recognized that impulse was not necessarily super-wise because she recognized that you had to talk about these problems in order to really understand them and try to fix them. the people who come up to me and say that my ma-maw, pa-paw were heroes, my sister is a hero, i think that is what i wanted to accomplish in this book. i want to show people that when you grow up in this kind of

life, you need a lot of people to play a heroic role in your life, in order to have a chance. luckily i had that with my grandparents and my sister. this is the story of how they impacted my life in a lot of positive ways. brian: where is your sister? j.d.: in ohio. brian: issue married? j.d.: yes. i think in our own ways, we have it each escaped the statistics that say that we should not be able to live a happy life and have an intact family or a decent and steady job. lindsay and i have both overcome that in a lot of ways. brian: let me read this -- what is that about? j.d.: family honor and family

loyalty are really important, when you grow up like this. you are a poor kid and do not have a lot to hang your hat on. we are taught from these stories our answer and uncles told us, to the way we are taught to never let insults to your family or mother go unpunished. it is important to defend the family honor and that you are part of the family story. the point of those insults is that they are pretty mild insults, the sorts of things that, in a corporate boardroom or in a successful 21st-century marriage, it doesn't make sense to respond to these insults with hot temper, fists, or violence, but when you grew up in a community like that -- when you grow up in a family like mine, you are really taught that is what you have do do. brian: you talk about bob on one page and you say --

how much or how many others were like that description of bob? j.d.: not a whole lot fit all of the stereotypical boxes. one of the things i try to write about is that a lot of the stereotypes are not totally fair and people are, justifiably, sensitive about being stereotyped as just a "dumb redneck." hopefully, that is not the picture i am painting of my family. some are not as extreme as bob, but i try to point out that a lot of these problems that maybe we perceive as stereotypes do not exist in everybody, but they are certainly there. the problems exist at a disproportionate level in our community and we got to be open

about it if we ever want to change direction. man work% of the young fewer than 20 hours a week and find that a single person aware of his own laziness. j.d.: yeah. the tough thing about these areas is that most of the people who are out of work are trying to find a good job, they are really trying to get ahead, applying, putting out resumes, talking to friends and family, you have to be cognizant that those people exist. on the other hand, there are people who are not working and don't seem to care that they are not working. but what is interesting, is they are not aware of it, right? so the people who are not working do not call themselves lazy. they extolled the virtues of hard-working, even as they don't work. you see these people working hard and trying to get ahead in the other people who are not

working hard and are not trying to get ahead. and both of those people exist and if you live in a community like mine, you cannot miss both them because you see both sides of the coin. brian: i will not be able to read at all. my sister and i -- j.d.: that is exactly right. so, the chicken man is a guy who raised chickens just like people stood where he came from. he was an eastern kentucky transplant with chickens in his backyard. when one got old or sick, he would wring its neck and cut it up for meat. there are a lot of modern americans who are creating that life and it was looked down upon

back then. it is one of the many ways where my grandparents felt like they were outsiders in this ohio town, as eastern kentucky transplants that many would call "hillbillies." there were also the relatively upper-class ohioans who were not comfortable with the chicken man moving into their communities and having certain habits that came with them. brian: how often did you see people one you were growing up hungry? j.d.: not a lot. definitely not a lot of that extreme poverty. you saw that a little bit in jackson. certainly the adults were aware of it. as a kid, i was not aware of it. i did remember people talking about it. in middletown, people with not that much money were not so destitute that they could not

afford food. they are not worried about where the next e-mail my camp from. -- next meal might come from. i never got the sense that they were truly desperate. brian: how many were poor? j.d.: a big chunk. it is hard to put in exact number on it. obviously people mean different things by the word "poor." i would say a quarter of the population of middletown lived if not below the poverty line, pretty close to it. did not have a ton of money, and maybe they were worried about how they would put clothes on their kid's back and struggling in different ways. worried about school supplies. a good chunk of people were poor and struggling to make it in different ways. brian: you talk about religion. your own beliefs? you were a believer, not a believer, people around you were -- give us some background. how religious is that area? j.d.: it is very religious, in self-identification.

if you ask people whether they identify as christians were not christians, they will say they are evangelical christians and very add out. people are not going to church is a much so they will identify as christian, but not going to a traditional bricks and mortar institution. i think it is very important because as i write in the book, having connection to the church community, that sense of support and moral pressure, did not make sense to me when i first got shoul job wass jo church important. it worries me that in these areas, since i have reengaged in my religious faith and it worries me that you see people who identify as christian but do not have connection to the church, because i do not think you are getting the benefits that come along with your faith if you are not engaging in the week-to-week way. brian: what is the hillbilly highway?

j.d.: if this sort of broad term that captures a lot of roads that brought people into indiana, ohio, michigan. it is just a road. it is u.s. route 23, which ran through eastern kentucky to i think all the way through columbus. there were a bunch of people who drive along that highway, moving permanently, in search for a better life or wage. but they are also -- what is interesting is that that was also the way people got home on holidays. and so it is hillbilly highway because you are driving in these areas and you would see eastern kentucky with license plates from michigan and ohio. that is the roads these people traveled. brian: what is the

distance between jackson, kentucky, and middletown, ohio. j.d.: jackson, kentucky is in coal country. as the crows fly, it is 100 or 110 miles. in terms of driving, it is 3.5 hours. that is mostly because with the mountain roads, you cannot drive that asked on them. they are real hilly. you go up and you go down. it is difficult to get a good speed. it feels further away than it actually is. it is a place where you can make a good weekend trip. it takes a while to get there. brian: how do people game the food stamp system? j.d.: there are a couple of ways. so this is something i saw when i was a cashier at a local grocery store. one way is that they buy soda and they sell it to their neighbors for a cash discount so

that allows them to sort of transfer food stamps into cash. sometimes they will sell the food stamps directly. it's illegal, but a lot of people still do. another thing i saw was people coming in and buying a lot of food and soda with food stamps , but then they would buy everything else on a separate check. there is a recognition that they are not depending on the stamps in the way that was intended and what is interesting about this is that it breeds resentment in your neighbors. because people see people who need those and they do not take advantage of the system and they see people who do take advantage of the system and they get frustration towards those who are gaming the system and they are frustrated with the government, who they feel is not monitoring the benefits as well as they should. there is an interesting feeling of people who recognize that the assistance is needed, but feel a

little bit ambivalent toward those who exploited. brian: you said you had an epiphany as a young boy? do you remember that? j.d.: i had a few epiphanies as a young boy. one of those epiphanies it is that i sort of recognized that maybe all of the things that folks -- meaning especially the government -- were trying to do to help communities like mine, maybe the help was not necessarily going to the places it was needed, right? so this is what i write about with the welfare system, you would see that people are using the system well and others are not using the system as honestly as they should. brian: you said i hated school and i hated home more. and when you talk about home, what home are you talking about? i'm talking of the home

that i had with mom, where we felt like we were constantly cycling from one boyfriends place to another boyfriends place to her husband's i'm talke that i had with mom, where we pd it was unstable, chaotic, there was intense fighting and domestic violence in one direction or another and i hated the instability, feeling as though i could never get comfortable and that i was constantly moving. you could come home from school one day and find out that you were moving from a house that you liked to a house of a complete stranger. that is what i disliked the most about home. brian: school? why did you hate school? j.d.: i didn't see the point of it and there was not a clear connections that now exists in my mind between education and opportunities. the people who did well in school did not necessarily make a whole lot out of themselves . you saw so many people not making or having good opportunities, so it was hard to believe that school mattered that much.

and partially the reason i hated it was because it is hard to go from a home where you are unhappy to a school, where everything is sunshine and rainbows. the unhappiness from home -- sometimes you get sick, stressed out, worried about going home, and it colors the way you approach school. it makes you not especially happy to be at school even if it is better than the home that you came from. brian: now that you have a four year degree from ohio state and a lot agree from yale. what do you think of the school middletownto back in , ohio and other places? j.d.: i think they could do more to help poor kids and i do not think it was primarily the problem of mine growing up. there was so much going on and it was tough to focus. i would like to see the focus on recognizing the problem that

existed in homes like mine and trying to anticipate those problems and maybe counteract them. i'm cognizant of the fact that it is hard to make up for a negative home life and we really had teachers that tried hard, and lot of ways. brian: what was the relationship with ma-maw and your mother? j.d.: it was close but also pretty chaotic. as you read in the book, ma-maw was not afraid to say that she disagreed with this or that lifestyle choice. i think she was mom's best friend, but she was not the best friend that was purely enabling. a lot of the time she was the best friend who was not afraid to tell my mother about her decisions. brian: you have lived in columbus. could you ever go back to hill country? j.d.: i definitely could. brian: would you?

j.d.: it is hard to imagine going back to a rural place. the opportunities are not there. that is why people, like me, leave. we stay away for so long not just because they don't love where they came from. it is still a place i feel most comfortable in the whole world it is just hard to imagine what job i would do. the brain drain is not because we do not like our home anymore, but you have to have higher-skills jobs. that's to support an economy that has law school graduates and so forth. you had somebody ask you if you go to yale and you dodged it. someone at a gas station asked me if i went to gail and i felt like i could identify as this elite ivy league or and t.l like a traitor

or i could be the southern ohio boy to get along. i said that my girlfriend went to yale. the reason i said this is because the upward mobility and all of this relocation creates conflict in our mind. i lied to this woman because i would have felt like a bit of a class traitor. i don't want to gloss over the fact that, when you go to yale, you become culturally alienated from the home that you grew up around, but do think it is possible, to maintain your roots and maintain some connection to where you come from it just requires a little bit of conscientiousness. brian: one thing missing from your book is pictures. why no photos and are there any available? j.d.: i am working on getting a website up so people can see some of the characters they are reading about. it is something that did not come up. i wonder why we didn't think to stick some photos in. may be my fault and maybe just somebody could think people

would want to see these photos. i definitely regret it, in hindsight, because people identify strongly with some of these characters like ma-maw. it is something i am working on, so people who are fans of the book, please hang in there. i would like to get some photos up on a website soon. brian: what is "hillbilly justice?" j.d.: hillbilly justice is a sense that there are certain wrongs in the world and it is a combination with vigilantism. is this feeling that you do not need the law. sometimes, you should take care of business yourself. my grandmother told me the story of a man who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman and they found him facedown in a local river with 16 bullet holes in his back. the local people the next day ran a very short story. "man found dead, foul play suspected."

with all those bullet holes in your back, you would certainly suspect that foul play would be expected. me-maw laughed at this. she said, this is what you do, when somebody wrongs your family. brian: your ma-maw came close to killing somebody. j.d.: somebody was trying to steal the family cow. this is a family legend i heard report to me a couple times. she went outside and grabbed a rifle and shot when the man -- one of the men who is tried to steal the cap. the other man drove away, leaving his comrade bleeding at the family farm. ma-maw went up to him it and she wanted to finish the guy off, raising the rifle at point-blank range. her older brother impressed upon

her and said she shouldn't do that and let the man should face the legal consequences. she felt passionately that it was wrong for the poor to steal from one another, that it was the ultimate moral sin and she thought this guy committed in and even at 12-years-old, she was not afraid to take care of this. brian: you say she was a violent non-drunk and pa-paw was a nonviolent drunk. who is the violent among the grandparents? j.d.: they both could be violent. ma-maw to be more violent than pa-paw. there is a famous and troubling story of my grandpa, he had gotten drunk and my grandma said, if you ever get drunk again, i will kill you. a couple weeks later, he came home drunk and she poured gasoline on him and set him on fire and luckily one of my aunts spring into action and prevented him from suffering any serious consequences and he escaped with mild burns. it really goes to show that she

was not a "take it laying down" sort of type. it exacerbated the violence, maybe made it a little worse. it is funny, or troubling, it depends on your perspective. she said, you got a detail wrong. and i thought, oh no, there is a mistake in my book -- the worst thing imaginable. she said, as i remember it wasn't gasoline, it was lighter fluid. i said, ok, that is ok to mess that up. it doesn't change the nature of the story. stuff like that really happened and it was a chaotic place to grow up. brian: you talk about your sister lindsay being very attractive. where did she get that in the family? is that your mother or grandmother? do you know?

j.d.: i think a lot of the women in our family are beautiful. if you look at old photos of my grandma, in her hey-day, she was a stunner. i think lindsay got it from all sides -- from her mom and dad. she was a beautiful young girl and it goes back to family honor and pride. i am proud of her for not just being a good person and being smart, but also because i thought she was beautiful. brian: how much education do the people in your family have? j.d.: i'm the only person to get a four year degree. my uncle, he, i believe he got a four-year degree later in life. he went to an adult education class. my uncle jimmy. he and i are the only one with any significant college education. i believe my mom may have an associates degree in nursing. i am the only person i know, even going down to third and fourth cousins, who has a right

graduate degree. brian: when did you first get the idea to write the book? j.d.: i first got the idea to write the book as a third-year law student. i was bothered by the question of why there weren't more like me at yale, why there were more poor kids like me. i wanted to ask and answer that question. why am i so unique here? and that is really what the book is about. brian: what did you do about it? you said you wanted to write a book and this is published by harper and is on the bestseller list. j.d.: it is funny. it actually did come together in a serendipitous way. i did not expect it to happen. i have a professor who is an author who wrote famous books

and they said that i should publish a book. i said, i will think about it and i wrote it, not thinking about if it we get published. a few months later, i was still in law school and she connected me with some friends of hers in the publishing industry and i ie thing led to another and had a book deal. excuse me. that is how that happened. that is how it happened, she connected me with the right people. those people made sure i got a book deal let him was able to publish the book and publish it well. obviously things have gone pretty well, so far. brian: just for context, she sat here a couple years ago. she talked about her international book and she was the author of the tiger mom book, which was so successful. you showed up at yale. you were counting on spending couple hundred thousand dollars.

what happened? j.d.: they were saying i was getting aid for the kids that were not especially wealthy and i would receive the maximum amount, because i was one of the poorer kids and it was one of the first times that being poor paid so well. it goes to show that these really elite universities try to recruit poor kids. it is hard to pierce that expectation that i had. even as a relatively well-educated guy that already got into yale law school, i had no idea it would be so cheap to go. i thought i would have to take out a $200,000 loan but at the end of the day, i probably incurred less debt, because i came from a family that did not have a lot of money. brian: how many jobs did you have when you went to ohio state? j.d.: it oscillated. i had a couple, at one point. i had three. i just did not want to incur a

lot of debt. this was before the newer and more generous g.i. bill. andion was pretty expensive living was pretty expensive. i wanted to have spending money. at the marine corps, i got used to not worrying about money and i liked it. i like not worrying about having a beer with friends. i had jobs i was lucky to have, as they were rewarding and interesting. it is hard. you do not have as much time to spend on your studies, you certainly don't have as much time to spend on sleeping. brian: what was your gpa? j.d.: it was around 4.0. i did really well at ohio state i definitely did very well at ohio state and tried. i realized that was my shot and i could not mess it up, if i wanted to go to a good law school, wanted to have good opportunities, i had to do well at ohio state. i studied hard and i did well.

brian: 4.0? j.d.: maybe a 3.95? i don't remember. i remember maybe i got one be the entire time i was there. brian: how did you get into yale? j.d.: a combination of luck and may be a good l-sat score. if you want to go to law school, you have to take the law school admission test. i did well enough on that test. i had good grades at ohio state. maybe the admissions committee just saw something. maybe they like the marine corps background? when i first applied to law schools, i didn't apply to yale or harvard. i thought there was no chance i would get in. i only apply to those places on the encouragement of a friend. brian: to quote you -- "i am a hill person." still? j.d.: yes.

i think what a hill person is, it is about humility, loving the land where you came from, most of all the recognition that the value of someone is not in the credentials they have, not in the job they have, not how much money they make. it is how they treat the person people around them. that is one value of being a hill person that i hope i will never let go of because that is something important and has served me pretty well. brian: what is the story of you riding in the car with your mother and you got out of the car and ran away? put that into context. j.d.: i was with my mom and something bad had happened. i remember she was very apologetic and asked me to take a ride with her. she lost her temper, spent the car up really fast, and she told me she would crash the car and kill us both.

obviously, i was scared. i was 11 or 12. what i did for reasons i told -- i don't totally understand, i took off my seatbelt and hopped into the back of the car. as soon as she pulled over the car, i took the opportunity to bolt. we were in a pretty rural part of ohio because i ran through a house. i got to the house and i asked a woman to call the police. she called the police. about the time they came, my mother had located the house and she was arrested. that was obviously traumatic to see her get arrested. it was traumatic to have that experience in the first place. it was romantic to have that experience in the first place. and the worst part was that it invited the state into our lives in a way that was uncomfortable and that i regretted a great deal. brian: did anybody in your life not like the book? one that i know

personally has told me that they don't like the book good. / . i think everybody, the folks from eastern kentucky and southern ohio, they recognize the good and the bad in this book. and what i have been really grateful for and i have really appreciated are the folks who said thank you for portraying us in a positive but honest light. for being honest about the problems but also being compassionate about them. so it really reinforces my belief that there is a real hope that we can talk about these problems openly in our community. like i said, in the hope we will be able to change direction and make things a little bit better in the future. brian: what do you consider to be elite? j.d.: what i consider to be

elite is one a cultural disposition, typically eating at certain restaurants, having certain habits, vacationing in certain places, obviously there is an element of wealth. there is an element of income and there's an element of elite credentials. the last thing i will say is that there's an important part of geography. so if i can sum of the elites, these are people who grew up different from where i grew up around. brian: how do you view government? j.d.: pretty complicated right. i'm a relatively conservative guy. i believe government has a role to play in addressing these sort of problems. i am not the sort of guy who thinks we should do away with all government assistance for the poor. but i also respect and understand that government activity can both harm some of these communities, great negative incentives that have to

be over, on the one hand and also that it can address problems without really appreciating the nature of and understanding the problem so i would like to see government think a little bit harder about how we can teach lower income parents how to interact with their children better. that is something we do nothing about because we tend to think about these problems as economic and income. i do think government suspiciously but also as an entity that has so some role in addressing these problems. brian: have you been back to middletown high school to talk about your life and this book? j.d.: i have not been back since this book has come out. i have had some contact with the administrators and i hope to go back. brian: so what would you tell a young person who's had the same experience that you had? how do you get to ohio state? how do you get to yale law school? j.d.: what i would tell them

first of all is you have to strike a delicate balance. you have to recognize that life is unfair and a lot of ways and you have to see that unfairness and recognize that, with hard work and support for your family, you can overcome this and i always tell kids who were in circumstances similar to mine is to never give in to the self-defeating at th attitude. never give up on yourself. that is the worst of all possible worlds. how do you get to yale and get a nice job? all of those things? at the end of the day, work really hard, find mentors who will support you, guide you through the unfamiliar territories and unfamiliar networks. but you have to be lucky in some ways. this is a thing i try to impress

upon people. this will not be solved entirely by personal agency. i'm not an "up from your bootstraps" kind of guy. i am not the kind of guy who said i am going to work hard and make it and went ahead and did it. i had a lot of help and i want to give more kids the same sort of assistance i had. brian: how did you meet your wife? j.d.: i met her in california. she is the daughter of south asians immigrants. she is different from me, but i see all the same values that i admire in the hill people in her. a love of country, faith and hard work. most of all just a recognition that it's not what kind of job you have or where you went to school that gives you values. it is how you treat people. so i really fed into her family pretty well. brian: where is her family from? j.d.: india. brian: you wrote --

brian: what is the eraser story? j.d.: i was in iraq and we went to do assistance at a local school. i remember we were giving out school supplies and i gave this eraser to a boy. and he grabbed it from me and smiled so big and held it aloft like a trophy. he ran back to his family. i was looking at his environment

and his life and i realized that he had it a lot worse than i did. when you grow up, like i did, it is easy to believe that the deck is stacked against you and irene it is very easy to be resentful with all damages you don't have. in that moment, i realize that i'm actually lucky and i should start appreciating some of the things my grandparents did for me, instead of being resentful. brian: when books like this are successful, something triggers it. what was it? j.d.: i think maybe donald trump may have helped things a little bit. broad recognition that people want to understand this group of voters who are voting for him. brian: who in the media triggered the interest? j.d.: the american conservative, rod dreher published a kind

review of the book and then a long interview on his blog, giving me a chance to articulate the most important lessons from the book, that poverty and inequality are both structural, but also cultural problems. brian: how did you know him? j.d.: i did not know him at all. he was passed to it by a friend. he really liked the book and he blogged about it. brian: how many printings? j.d.: 250,000. brian: how many did they print originally? j.d.: 10,000. brian: how soon do they not the publisher that they had a hit here are would they have to print again? jd: i don't know exactly when they knew, but it was right after the interview was published on american conservative. it made us realize the demand was greater than we thought it was going to be. they went after a second and third inning right away and it was off to the races from there.

brian: any intention of another book? j.d.: no intention because i didn't plan on writing this one when i wrote it, but never say never. brian: most significant change? j.d.: i have a lot of strangers who know a lot about me and i did not necessarily want them to. i am a private person and i do not like telling personal stories and it is awkward to know that so many know so much about me, but the book justifies my willingness to be forthright about my personal history. brian: a lot of people like you say, i am a private person. how can you call yourself a private person and write about this stuff about your family? j.d.: yeah -- the reason i say i was a private person is i was so uncomfortable with it and i had to be pushed to be more honest and more forthright. brian: who pushed you?

j.d.: i was pushed by my wife, my agent, everybody. i was pushed and i had to tell the stories. the bargain i struck with myself is that i think the story told is one that needed to be. brian: one last quick question. kentucky and middletown, ohio, is it an all-white population? j.d.: not all-white. brian: the picture on the cover of your book and the book is called "hillbilly eleg y." brian: where does the picture come from? j.d.: i don't know. it is a stock image. i think it is a getty image the publisher used to put together the cover. i do not know exactly where it is from. my guess is that it is from western north carolina. brian: the book is "hillbilly elegy." thank you for joining us. j.d.: thank you for having me. ♪

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] announcer: for free transcripts or to give us comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. transcripts are also available at c-span podcasts. ♪ announcer: if you liked this q&a program with jd fans, here are some others you might enjoy. author nancy isenberg on her book "white trash," which takes a historic look at the class system. also, former nypd deputy eguesector corey p

writes about his experiences as a cop. and jenny beth martin talks about the tea party movement and its grassroots work around the country. you can find those interviews online at c-span.org. >> c-span brings you more to debates this week from key senate races. live on c-span, the pennsylvania senate debate between pat toomey and democrat karen mcginty. florida debate between marco rubio and democratic congressman patrick murphy. thursday night at 8:00 eastern, kelly ayotte and maggie hassan debate for the new hampshire u.s. senate seat. follow these races on the c-span

networks, c-span.org, and on the c-span radio app/ . c-span -- where history unfolds daily. >> here on c-span, "washington journal" is next. we take you on the campaign trail with democratic presence of candidate hillary clinton and centers from elizabeth warren in new hampshire. later, discussing strategies for combating opioid addiction in the u.s. on today's "washington journal," a look at the battleground state of north carolina and its role in the 2016 presidential race. first, wake forest university professor john dinan joins us to talk about voter enthusiasm in the state. and the political makeup of north carolina and the chances of donald trump winning there with north carolina republican party executive director dallas woodhouse. and later, talking about

politics co-public per gary pearce talks about the clinton campaign and what he's doing to win in the tar heel state. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016]] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. isit ncicap.org] host: it is the "washington journal" for october 24, 15 days before election day. today on the c-span network, hillary clinton in manchester, new hampshire. she will appear alongside senator elizabeth warren. you can see that event live on c-span. donald trump received his first major newspaper endorsement. other stories highlighting the fact that the paper was purchased by sheldon adelson, a longtime supporter of republicans. we want to hear from you in our first 45 minutes on your thoughts on why you think your