Regarding Hillbilly Elegy: I read it after another post-election book list recommended it, and found it to be a very mixed bag and generally a disappointment. T

Regarding Hillbilly Elegy: I read it after another post-election book list recommended it, and found it to be a very mixed bag and generally a disappointment. The valuable part was the depiction of his home life and the disintegration of the social fabric of his community over a few generations driven by unseen but acutely felt economic trends. Very touching and powerful accounts. The latter half of the book, however, was by far the weakest. There he attempts to recommend fixes for the issue from a libertarian perspective. His beliefs are not surprising given his current employment in a Thiel hedge fund. This part of the book had little insight and seemed to be an ideologically driven argument by, ironically, a newly minted financial elite that his own community distrusts.