[inaudible conversations] all day here at the library of Congress National book festival we are recognizing and celebrating the importance of reading and authors and books. The library of congress mix it seem easy to do this each year but the truth is the National Book festival is a huge undertaking. Its a huge financial undertaking. And it has been made possible by generous support from our sponsors. You can see who they are in the programs and video monitors around the Convention Center but they ca tend to take for granted that this will continue to exist. So id ask you to consider making the contribution right now using your cell phone and you can send a text to make a onetime gift that will be added to your mobile phone bill. The details are on the screen and on the back of your program. Once you are to please silence your cell phone. Onto the main event id like to introduce the cochair of the National Book festival, david rubenstein. [applause] we are very honored today to have one of the bestselling authors in the country with us today that the person who wrote his first book and already a New York Times bestseller list. How many people here have read the book lacks how many people are going to read the . How many people are going to go buy the book today . Okay. Our special guest is j. D. Vance. Im going to ask him to come up now. [applause] but we get people who may not know your background a little introduction. He is a native of middletown ohio and graduate of the middletown high school. He then went into the marines for four years, served in iraq and came back, went to ohio state and finished it in. Then went to Yale Law School. Hes now in the investment world and based in part in washington, d. C. Peace here somewhere. Maybe on the way with bringing his two monthold son. [laughter] [applause] if you see him somewhere that is his son. So lets start. When you started to write this book in your wildest imagination, you couldnt have thought that they were going to write a bestseller. I certainly didnt think that i would. Where did the idea come from . It actually started in law school and really the genesis was interested in some of the concepts and the ideas i wrote about in the book. Most specifically. At yale we had to write a basically a thesis to graduate and i wanted to write about the policy implications of the social mobility in the United States or the lack thereof. And the more that i started to talk through the idea of the people advising me, the more that i especially my primary advisor continued. She is the author of battle hill and the tiger mother. She encouraged me to bring my personal experience is to bear because she thought that i could write something that was both intellectually interesting but also personally and emotionally powerful. And as i continued to write the book, i was a little resistant to that. I didnt like opening up my personal life into telling these stories but the more i wrote the more i realized to the degree i had a unique contribution that i thought these things from the inside as opposed to just an academic. So you have the idea of writing the book. How long did it take to write the book . I always have another job while i was writing the book. It took about two and a half years. I started writing it towards the middle of 2013, and i finished towards the end of 2015. Did you write longhand or on the computer . My handwriting is absolutely terrible. Did you have a publisher lined up . Because of amy when i started to really think about digging this into a book project, she said okay let me introduce you to these people i know in the publishing world. Its relatively easy and that is what happened with me. Were you ever in that category and did you ever want to abandon its . If my wife were here she could tell you how miserable i was through the writing process. For me, what was so tough is that once i got about halfway through the book obviously it was too late to give up i could just not writing it. But writing an additional 40 or 50,000 words i realized then that i didnt realize going into the project is that i had about a ten to one ratio of the words typed that made the final manuscript, so i didnt realize what a long road it would be until i was halfway through and yes i definitely thought to myself what is be possible to get out of this . Your publisher had some confidence into the initial print run was 10,000 concert 10,000 i10,000 isnt 500,000, bt 10 pound10,000is good for a fir. When the book came out, at what point do people say ther there e enough copies and we need to print more . 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 the american conservative that went viral where a lot of people were sharing it on twitter and facebook and so forth and i went to go check my amazon ranking that is the way to check in real time how the book is actually selling so there is a point in my life i was checking it excessively. I would go to check my ranking and it said we will ship in about a week and i realized then we dont have enough books out there so that is when they really started to turn on. How many have been printed . I dont know how many total or in print. I know that in hard copies have sold just under a million and its a little over a million if you count digital copies and audio copies and all that stuff. [applause] the title, very often authors 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 this woman, tina. I wanted the word hillbilly to be in the title and the reason i wanted that word to be in the title is because i thought it captured the sort of particular cultural but i also thought it captured obviously the sort of interesting inside or outside the dynamic that existed where i thought my grandmother would say we are hillbillies. We are allowed to call everybody hillbillies but then you have to punch them in the nose and so it was a sort of interesting word that and a textured meaning as i grew up and i wanted that to be in the title, but it wasnt something that took a while before i was more comfortable with making hillbilly elegy and i think that was her idea and there were a couple of reasons for that. Now the book has become so wellknown and you are reasonably well known. Can you go to a restaurant without people asking for photographs or has that been a problem yet . It depends on where im at. I get noticed back in columbus i get noticed a pretty fair amount i get noticed sometimes back in Eastern Kentucky or southwestern ohio, but i was in nashville what has been the reaction so many people dont really want revealed about themselves and everybody elses family secrets, if you reveal the secrets, what is the reaction to this . In revealing any secrets i think that theres been a slight shift from when i started to write that up to where it is now. Now that we are at the number of copies that we have sold but some people definitely say it is in the family and we shouldnt air their dirty laundry. How come i dont get any royalties from this, they dont say that to you yet . Maybe they will now especially since this is on cspan. [laughter] lets talk about the book itself. I read it and enjoyed it a great deal. I would say i think the success is due to the three things. One is i think the writing style is very crisp and clear, very to the point, not if of excess verbiage. Second, the personal story is extraordinary which is the kind of thing that is almost like a novel. And third, the impact, the relationship between whats going on in the country, the Opioid Crisis followed with unemployment. So, lets go through each of these first. First, the writing style. Were you a gifted writer in college or law school, where did you get this crisp and clear writing style . I think thats definitely law school helped a lot in that regard is one of the things they teach is you dont write for the love of excess verbiage. Try to be clear but also engaging. So, thinking about how to write as a lawyer and cut out some of the excess words was hopeful helpful. There was a biography and its interesting because it is very similar and they will pass it around and say youre such a great writer even at 14yearsold. When my wife picks up the same thing and says your family isnt that honest with you. I do think that law school helped. There is a story b story that il them to vote for the first writing assignment i had i handed it in and this professor handed it back in the circle of a big section masquerading as a paragraph. So if i were a talented writer they would probably say no. Having had the first book that is successful, normally publishers over to the author and say you are ernest hemingway, but have another book right away and the sooner you get out, the better. Are you thinking of writing another one right now but thanks certainly thinking of writing another one. My view on this is that it is not some thing that i am trying to undertake tomorrow. If i write another book it will be a couple of years from now as opposed to it immediately. But eventually there will be a paperback edition. Edition. While you edit or change it a little bit or go at it the same way . I will probably go at it the same way. I would like to add a texture debate coach after because when i started writing this in 2016 i had no idea that there would be an attachment in this really pretty bizarre way so i think i would like to write at least a little bit about that because i havent talked a ton about that. Otherwise it will stay the same. Before the paperback comes out or maybe after the paperback comes out, there is supposed to be a movie. Ron howard is producing a movie or directing it. Who is going to play you . I dont know. The thing about this, i want it to be somebody that is goodlooking is not so goodlooking that they were disappointed when they actually meet me. [laughter] but yes it is who fits into that mouth to form, not too cold category. Lets go to the second part, and that is your life story. For those who may not have read the book and i dont want to give away everything but a fair bit. Where were you born . Middletown ohio. Their names are bonnie and jim disproportionately they called their grandparents mamw and papaw. Some people might say what is held only about ohio but you might describe your roots were from kentucky because they came to ohio. They were part of this massive migration from places like Eastern Kentucky come east tennessee, virginia to the industrial midwest and when they moved they brought their cultural attributes with them so even though my family lived in southwestern ohio we traveled back a lot because i spend so much time with my grandparents in Eastern Kentucky and it always felt it was our homeland and its interesting there was a common attitude. There were Country Music songs about this and a lot of stories similar to mine where people grew up in the industrial midwest and michigan or indiana or ohio and fel salt lake herals West Virginia because they spend so much of their lives in that place and that is where their families were from. So you were growing up and have a stepsister or a full sister . Is a sister, different advocacy mom. Both of you are raised by your single mother and how did she support herself . So, i remember she became a nurse sometime after maybe i was eight or nine and as i write and debug those were good times economically. We were not struggling economically during those times in our life. Before then, i dont know. I think that she worked odd jobs with my grandparents and helped out a little bit and then certainly one of the stories in the book is after she was no longer working in nursing things were pretty tough for our family economically and socially. So your mother as you write in the book was married or had relationships with People Living with her, four, five or six at a time. Wasnt that kind of disconcerting to you to see a different man in the house all the time . It was an unstable childhood in the perspective of people coming in and out of our lives and i didnt realize until i was older but effective is having on me. I didnt like it when i was a kid, certainly that i would befriend a guy or thought he was becoming a bit of a father figure and all of a sudden he was out of our lives. I knew a lot of my friends back home were going through the same thing. I didnt quite appreciate the effective as having. Youve lived with him for a while and it wasnt as pleasant an experience as you thought it would be is that correct . He had his life together and was living with my stepmom and they had a happy home life and in some ways i was looking for that and searching for the family stability in eighth grade or so when this happened but i also realized that i had become incredibly attached to my grandmother. When we were living with mom as kids, we spent a lot of time with her grandparents and we spent more and more time with her grandparents and so there was a lot of i recognized he had a normal home as people understood it but i felt so desperate to get back to my grandmothers house and live with her and that is what i did. I didnt think id realized until that moment. The shock of his passing away, how did that affect you . It affected me i think in all of the ways the death of a parent affects a kid. Because of the situation growing up, because of the revolving door father figures and so forth, he was the closest thing i had during those formative years and he was the person who took care of things and make sure that we had all these things a kid needs and was just an emotional support for my sister and grandmother. I always had this sense that if he was around things would be taken care of. He never flew off the handle. Even as much as i loved her she had a temper. I think it affected me in a number of different and negative ways the way that it affected me most of all those that came after it. It was in a non extinct as obvious way. So you lived with her mother for a while and then at one point she so i went with you and very difficult to deal with and had a drug problem. The police came and saved you from your mother. Is that fair . I think that this story a lot because i wonder i was 12 or 13 when this happened and i always wondered if maybe it wasnt quite as dangerous as i remembered because im closer now and they try to remember things in the way that reflects on the people that they love and are certainly both my mom and we are doing pretty well in the relationship now. I got out of the car and ran into the police came and arrested her and she was charged with Domestic Violence. At a time i lived with my grandmother. I was always living with her weeks or months at a time got different of a departure for the normal routine pesticide would live with mamaw for a little while and move back in with mom. When you were growing up, when i was growing up i didnt have the experiences you did, but i couldnt recall what would have been minus ten or 12 or nine. How do you recall that and do you have documents or how did you know these incidents so while . Being able to rely on your family really helps. A lot of the stuff i tried to cross reference as much as possible with my aunt or sister or mother or dad. What happened here, heres the draft, heres the manuscript of the particular story. What am i leaving out by missing or what have i not remember correctly. I do think going back to how the family reacted, one of the reasons they reacted pretty well is because they tried to make them part of the writing process instead of just from my memory onto the page. I tried to make a family memoir. As i said in the introduction, i am sure things are not 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 primarily a memoir. You point out your grandmother died obviously as well. That must have been traumatic. Were you living with her at the time . This is a few months before i left for iraq in 2005 and you were living with her, and were getting ready to graduate high school they lived with her for almost all of high school and left for the marines from her house. So you were filling out applications you write in your book for college and then either you thought you couldnt afford college or were not ready for it. I didnt feel ready and i thought i had enough time to realize this was my one opportunity to have anything in the way of the good job for good career and if i screwed this up it would be pretty much it. I didnt want to take it for granted that i was in this position and i felt like i would have taken advantage of it. The cost part was a significant issue as well. It wasnt just the cost. I knew i had to take out all these loans and get full grants and things like that but i knew there would be a pretty significant amount of debt that it was more of the logistical that made college seem so imposing. Thinking about filling out Financial Aid paperwork, what is your dads annual income and your dads address . At the time i havent spoken to my legal father in six or seven years. Going into finding that information required a certain amount of detective work. There were the sort of pages to sign off on these loans. My grandmother hadn had graduad from high school with me and it just seemed really imposing and a little terrifying to go through this entire administrative process that no one in my family have gone through and i didnt feel comfortable doing it myself. So yoso use that i would waln the street and go to a marine recruiter. I think that is a simple version of what happened. At that point there were six kids in my generation, my two older cousins, my sister and my younger cousins and both of the older cousins had so i was encouraged by my cousin who was in the marine corps who said if you are worried about how you are going to pay for school and if you are ready for college you should go join the marine corps will gain some Financial Independence and you should go and think about doing without. So you sign up for the marine corps. Was that a good idea to as . It is a Patriotic Community and they were proud of me that they were not especially happy that i have chosen i signed up in 2003. We had assembled in afghanistan for a while and that there was apprehension justifiably so. I think in some ways she framed the decision to go to college almost as a betrayal. You are going off and leaving me to take care of myself, you could get hurt and i think obviously that was hard she understood why i had to give it. I was never afraid i couldnt get through. Maybe when i was in high school i was afraid of the physical demands. But the drill instructor told me if you think that they are going to be mean they will be nothing like that grandmother. [laughter] i thought so long as i could cut the psychological part would be fun and i would be able to make it and that was true it was definitely challenging but its also in a weird way it is kind of fun and i know a lot of marines that enjoyed their boot camp experience and i was different in that. Your grandmother by the way, she has a colorful language. [laughter] how did you avoid or was she never embarrassed to use those words around you or did you not say anything about it . My son is too young to show the evidence. I definitely tried to cut back on the language relative to my grandmother because she loved a dramatic and wellplaced fword. You know it from mamaws house curse like a sailor doesnt come from nowhere, that the president Othe Department ofthe navy, andi definitely have had to scale back my language i in the marine corps. I was worried about it and tried to talk myself up and recognize i will probably end up close to coming back okay. You were ready for college but then you were than four years older than many of your college so why did you decide to go to ohio state isnt a great place to go but you have to consider any other place . To make these decisions seemed more rational than they were. The reason i wanted to go to ohio state is because i grew up rooting and loving ohio state and a lot of my friends have gone there. I wasnt nearly as thoughtful about my College Decision as i should have been. I had a great experience and im glad i went there but it was basically lock i found myself there. I wasnt thinking as sort of smartly about it as i should have been. Normally people go to college for four years and you seem to get through ohio state in two years. How did you get through in two years . You take to get out of clasd go to the summer and transfer credits that you gain during the marine corps over to ohio state. Those three things were enough to enable me to cut off a couple of years. Where did the support come from, did you have grants or the marine corps salary was enough to supplement . I wasnt getting a salary a little bit of savings and debt i borrowed some of the subsidized loans and had full grants and had the g. I. Bill which i was trying to save for law school that but i used some Nursing College and i worked jobs during college, so its those multiple different sources of income were enough to get me through. Cu graduate in two years and decide you want to go to law school but as you point out there are not as many people going to lets say yale or harvard from ohio state there obviously are some, but had you decided to go to yale as opposed to ohio state or some other school in the midwest. This is another thing where i wasnt thinking super strategically about it. I applied to a few law schools and i got into them and sort of was thinking about just going to one of those schools and my friend the best man at my wedding actually said if you have good grades and think you can get into a good place going into this is 2009 after the Great Recession since i have friends from law school that are struggling to find work, so you should try to get into the best school you can because that will be your best insurance policy against unemployment so i ended up taking off a bit of time. You were an average High School Student can did better. And did better. How did you change from a mediocre average is putting it to charity. You know, a couple of things one, i was a more mature person and this is me being pretty for college. To appreciate if it is this opportunity as opposed to the responsibility of somebody foisted upon me so i tried harder paying for it and seeing that the build up and up i was lucky to be able to go there. But i also thought a lot about my grandmother when i was in college who left school when she was 14yearsold to come to ohio and hadnt had any Educational Opportunities and was super smart and i thought to myself if she could sacrifice all those things i should take advantage of it and try harder. So you go to Yale Law School which is above the hardest to get into in the United States and many people go there from harvard or yale, princeton, some other colleges. Did you feel a little out of place i think in my year i was the only ohio state graduate at yale. I realized that there were high schools and preparatory schools where there were more students from that high school at yale then there were in my university which struck me as a little bit weird but definitely a cultural shock more than any other place i have been. In the backgrounds and some of my classmates relative to where i came from. Question middle, where were you . I think my wife was at the top which is why shes with the chief justice. I did not do these law schools dont give traditional grades as kind of hard to know where you rank relative to your peers. I was doing fine it wasnt at the bottom of the pack but certainly was not at the top either i was comfortable with that. Steam exley roach her way onto the gale law journals which is usually one of the most prestigious things you can do at Yale Law School so did you decide you are to practice law, be clear, what did you decide you want to do . My wife and i wanted to go to eastern district. Your you met your wife wishing the same class . Issue wife here somewhere . I dont see her here i thought she was coming. [laughter] there she is okay okay there she is. [applause] [laughter] so you you met her new in the same class . We were in the same class and were allowed to clerk in kentucky wework for separate entrance separate judges they were both in covington which is just over the river from cincinnati is a perfect opportunity to go and clerk for a federal be close to home. And work on things that we were both really interesting dust. Two you were trying to spend most of your life trying to escape kentucky and then he went back to kentucky. Two i dont know that i was trying to escape kentucky but the chaotic home i grew up and. A love the places that i came from. And i always wanted to go back. It definitely was a really exciting and good year. We both worked for really good people. Sometimes people get stuck with bad judges, but we worked for great people and had a great year. Host so i said in the beginning there are three reasons i think the book is very successful, at least in my view. Its very well written, very precise and a good read. Secondly, the life story is almost like a novel, so it is 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 a fair bit since you conceived of writing the book. And now what you wrote about is seeing is one of the problems of our country, weve a lot of drug abuse, opioid abuse, unemployment, particularly in the midwest and the people that you come from, the roots where you come from have these problems. Lets talk about that for a while. Lets talk about the opioid problem for a while. Growing up you point out in your book that drug abuse was a problem in your area and you think its gotten worse. Why do you think its so bad . Guest yeah it was something i saw growing up. I remember when addiction hit our family on i found out that mom was addicted to prescription pain pills, as we called them back then. I just didnt understand i didnt understand why anybody would be addicted to pain pills it wasnt especially common back in the mid 90s. So the problem had not gone mainstream as it has now. In 2017 we sit here and talk about the Opioid Epidemic which is not really a nationwide crisis. So i did fill in some ways i got an early insight into what would later become a crisis. Why has it gotten worse . There are a ton of Different Reasons a ton of different explanations. So one is to be honest a lot of these drugs were marketed is not addictive and they were addictive so people got hooked on them at cause a lot of problems. I think you have a really significant over prescription problem in these areas. I was just in Southeastern Ohio a few months ago talking to people dealing with this and they tell me that when High School Kids used to hang out and get into their parents liquor cabinet or get into their parents beer, now they will get into grandmas medicine cabinet and pass around drug. Thats a different kind of problem. I also think it is in some way a consequence of some really negative social problems that exist in these communities. If you have Domestic Violence if you have a lot of family instability for you have a lot of unemployment, then people do find some way to deal with it, maybe 50 years ago they dealt with that with alcohol, now they are dealing with it through a substance is more addictive. You have largely avoided the opioid problem and you write as i recall the use of marijuana, but nothing thats addictive. How did you avoid that in the environment within you grew up . So we are very cognizant of the problems of addiction was really, really strict about this stuff. If she found out we were smoking a cigarette or we had anything to drink mama would fly off the handle. I think she appreciated just how bad addiction could be in it clearly had this role in our family. This is the thing that really ruined her life for the first 30 years of her marriage was alcoholism. It was ruining the life of whatever kids and so i was very much on guard. We almost accepted lee so im one of these people who doesnt like to take ibuprofen for a headache because i am really uncomfortable with the idea of putting foreign substances in my body because i have seen addiction trap a lot of people. I got really sick was and i was at ohio state i got mono and they gave me this synthetic opioid because i had to take some medicine anyway i had this was in the hospital at ohio state, i remember calling basically everyone in my family saying i know why mama didnt like us to take this stuff because it is fantastic. [laughter] i think being on guard about that stuff, stu mackey avoided alcohol . No i havent avoided alcohol. [laughter] i certainly have never felt i have been addicted to alcohol sort of ending the ascii with the doctor in one of these once or twice a week type people. But no, i have never felt especially addicted to anything except chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. [laughter] lets see what lets talk about unemployment we talk about in the book people left kentucky to go north but those jobs have not been hollowed out. You see a lot of unemployment in the background you have. Can you describe of its Getting Better or worse what can be done about it . Guest at stephanie Getting Better last couple of years because the economy is picked up a little bit. I dont think it has improved significantly over where it was 30 or 40 years ago. What i mean is that the number of people at the coal or the steel mill industry employed in the 50s and 60s that hasnt returned to the last couple years is maybe not as bad as it was but i think you are seeing a really long term significant economic shift in some of these areas. Its something honestly i think policymakers were a little blind too. I think everybody just thought that the economy would adjust folks we get different jobs they would move into different professions. What actually happened is youve seen a lot of communities get really significantly decimated thats one of the other currents of the book. What is there to do about it . There are i think a lot of Different Things we could do about it. The first is that we have a pretty significant problem with the fact that youre effectively given the choice when you graduate from high school between going and working in a fast food job are going and getting a fouryear education. I think we should provide more pathways than that. I think when its not surprising that those are the only two pathways you see people going in those two directions. [applause] i we also have to think a little more constructively about Regional Economic development. The way this is gone for the last ten or 20 years is im a local pizza palace yet offer 70 tax credits for a restaurant in my hometown. Thats great, the restaurants are fantastic, but thats not the sort of longterm economic redevelopment that has to happen in some of these areas. Basically all levels of policymakers have to be thinking differently than they are now. Host someone he writes a book that is successful is yours about the subjects you deal with thomas at some point someone 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, senator and maybe something even higher. Have you ever thought about and have you thought about running for something . So i think were out of time right now thank you. [laughter] so you would say yes, you wouldnt preclude anything from happening . Certainly not. 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 if youd be interested in these things. Host have you talked to people who have these jobs that actually like these jobs though . [laughter] guest i actually dont think i have. Ive talked a couple of member of congress, not about me running but certainly about in this environment do you actually enjoy what you do . And they say yes, i really like working on policy the only problem is we dont do any of that. So no. Host okay leaving aside whether you would run for something because the platform you now have is so great, you can be a spokesman about alcoholism, unemployment, opioid addiction, are you going to kind of make it part of your career talking about these issues . Or do not want to be seen as a spokesman for these issues . So i dont know that i want to be seen as a spokesman for these issues but he certainly think that now i have this platform, i might as will do something with that productive other than just go and talk about the book. There are other issues that are worth talking about. I have tried to be a constructive participant in some of these policy debates during the healthcare reform debates of a few months ago i went to capitol hill and try to talk to folks about this is how this might affect the Opioid Crisis, this might affect some of the folks back home. I try to be a constructive participant as much as possible. But we live and an especially nonconstructive time. So i think you have to be careful, you have to be smart, and you have to recognize that sometimes, even when you try to be careful and smart you are not actually being careful and smart. C1 70 go to talk to members of congress do they just want a picture with you or autograph their book or did they listen to what you say . Guest it depends on the member and some of the staff members. But no, i found generally speaking, i have become maybe more cynical about our political product rest at large just from talking to folks and spending time in these areas. I do feel more optimistic about individual members and their staff. By and large people actually want to make a difference and care about the policy and care about what effect it is going to have. We just happen to live in a political. In a political time works really hard to translate interest in policy to constructive. Host people who might be called or called themselves as hillbilly or part of the hillbilly culture, are they proud of your book for having exposed some of the challenges they have . Or are they upset for exposing some of the challenges they have . Guest i think opinions differ. I think people out there think im basically a traitor and hate my guts. There are people out there who think i have shed a light on really important issues and they appreciate it. I think the thing i care most from people back home, when i going talk about the book her when i hear people when they run into me on the street, is that they appreciate the book is talked about these problems in a way they feel wasnt talked about before. That nobody really wrote the story from the inside. Nobody really talked about what is it like to grow up in a household with a lot of instability, a lot of addiction, whats it like to grow up in a household where you are really worried about whether you can pay for college or even pay for more fundamental things. That is a part thats the most gratifying to me. Its also a region thats very large and diverse. You have opinions that are probably as diverse as any large population. C1 what is the most frequent question you have been asked . You are on tv, your contributor to cnn, what is the question you get most frequently asked by audiences about your book or your background . Guest the question i get most frequently asked . Its probably how my family reacted to the book. Thats definitely something people are curious about. I get asked a lot how my mom is doing and the answer should that she is doing really well. Host shes not married now living in ohio . Guest shes back home shes been clean for very long time. I think in some ways while mom may not be ready to play this role and im not going to force it upon her, she is a really good example of what can happen when even after five or six times you get knocked off the horse of addiction, and back in the relapse, that it is still possible to sort of climb back out, find the right supports, and make another go at it. That is something i really admire about mom. She is incredibly tenacious. [applause] host this she now have a Business Card that says j. D. Vances mother . And what about your biological father . Do you have, conversations with him . Guest yes we got a text message just before i came up. We are still close and we talk a bit. He is doing very well. Hes a great guy, he and i most often talk about his grandsons, thats what he is most interested in and i think thats true of a lot of grandparents. See what you talk about in the book you grip largely with your sister, what is she doing now . Guest my sister has three kids back home in middletown. She has been married for 20 years or so, and is doing well. I think what lindsay and i wanted to really accomplish, but we thought of his success in our lives was being able to give our kids the stability and the comfort and the sense of security that we did not have his kids. She has successfully done that from his 20 years. Her oldest kid is 18. I have done that for three months. [laughter] i am hopeful i get there too. C1 today do you find your friends from high school laugh at your jokes more than they did before . Do they treat you differently . How to the people you grew up with to reach you now that you are so famous and wealthy . You may ask you for money . [laughter] guest sometimes people asked me for money but thats not a common occurrence. There is definitely some people who laugh loud or at my jokes, but my real friends do not laugh louder. Thats one of the really good things about having a successful book, or what a successful book and do as you realize the people who are loyal to you no matter what and dont you get too big for your britches as we say back home. Those of the people i really latch onto. C1 so leaving aside your political or your potential political career youre not practicing law you are and what i would call the highest calling of mankind, private equity and investing. [laughter] so, why did you choose to go into the Venture Capital space . Why did you choose to go into that area and youre doing it from a firm that space here and living in ohio is that right . Guest that is right. And what i find so interesting about what i am doing right now, is if its done well, it can actually help create amazing new products in amazing new companies, an amazing new jobs that did not exist before. One of the things i realize in law school and i think i came into this with a veil behind my eyes was lifted, the people who i think are really frankly called the shots in our economic system, are those who are figuring out where capital goes. And i think when they realize that and i told myself id like to be a guy whos trying to figure out how to get capital to go into good places words going to do a lot of good in words going to create a lot of value, not just for investors but for people on the receiving end two. So some people who. [applause] some people write a book, margaret mitchell, there first book is so successful they have a hard time writing a second book. They get Writers Block because it think nothing can be as good as the first book. You know about that problem . Guest i dont know. [laughter] i didnt know my first some is that good so i dont know that in a followup will be measured well or poorly compared to it. It certainly was fixed successful. I would be an idiot if i expected any other book tv as successful but i will let other people decide if its good or not. C1 what you want to do with your life . You would be a role model for people who comes out of the background you came out of. Whether or not you like it is a role model you feel more responsibility to live a life a certain way . Do you feel you should give back to your community a certain way . How is your life change as a result of this book . I definitely feel a certain responsibility when i go on tv not to make my entire community seemed like it idiot. I think one of the things ive not not appreciated but just accepted as reality is a lot of people see me as a spokesperson for the white working class. A lot of times im last to go on tv and say whats a truck motor feel about this or that issue. I think that is unfair. I dont think any person could possibly speak to that many people or for the truck voter or at large. But what i try to do is recognize that some people see me as that representative. I tried not to sound like a total buffoon when i go on tv. That is one way i think exempt really change. Its crazy, right . A year end a half ago i was not sitting here in an auditorium in front of hundreds of people. Its kind of been possible to describe how my life is change. It is changed in a way that any persons life changes when they go from sitting at home, eating pints of ice cream and eating netflix to sitting here in front of hundreds of people. Steve would like the president of United States called you and said he read your book . Guest i have never heard that from president trump. I have heard people who work at the white house said something similar to that. But no, i have never gotten a phone call from president trump, im still waiting. Host said today its a very happy person, he got a child, a wife, your mother and father doing very well so you are happy person today . An experience of the books major life even better . Guest is going great, the book is change my life in a weird way. But very positive. Host i highly recommend it to those who have not read it yet and those that read it once, read it again. I do think its a very constructed well written i like to thank you for very interesting conversation. [applause] smacked weeknights we are featuring book tv program showcasing what is available every weekend on cspan2. Thursday, books on technology and innovation. We begin with john browns make fake imagine, engineering the future of civilization. Followed by lorien pratt, link how decision intelligence can affect data outcomes for a better world then gary marcus on hes engine has book rebooting ai building Artificial Intelligence we can trust. Book tv this week and every weekend on cspan2. Television has changed in cspan began 41 years ago. But our Mission Continues to provided unfiltered view of government. Already this year we have brought you primary election coverage for the president ial impeachment process, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affair programs on television, online, or listen on our free radio app. And be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily washington journal program. Or through media. Cspan, created by private industry, americas Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. So next we will hear from editors and contributors of the book appellation reckoning which provides a critical look at jd vances