‘Hillbilly Elegy': JD Vance’s rise to vice presidential candidate began with a bestselling memoir

NEW YORK (AP) — At the heart of J.D. Vance’s journey from venture capitalist to vice presidential candidate is a memoir he first thought of in graduate school, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

Vance’s bestseller about his roots in rural Kentucky and blue-collar Ohio made him a national celebrity soon after its publication in the summer of 2016, and became a cultural talking point after Donald Trump’s stunning victory that November. The Ohio Republican has since been elected to the U.S. Senate and, as of Monday, chosen as Trump’s running mate in the former president’s quest for a return to the White House.

What to know:

• Who is JD Vance?: Trump’s VP pick made a name for himself with his memoir, the 2016 bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy,” which was published as Trump was first running for president.
• Trump is the nominee: Donald Trump has become the official Republican presidential nominee after receiving the votes of enough delegates at the Republican National Convention.
• Latest on the assassination attempt: FBI officials say they have yet to determine what motivated the shooter to open fire from a nearby rooftop, killing one spectator and critically injuring two others before he was shot dead by the Secret Service.

In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance reflects on the transformation of Appalachia from reliably Democratic to reliably Republican, sharing stories about his chaotic family life and about communities that had declined and seemed to lose hope. Now 39, Vance first thought of the book while studying at Yale Law School, and completed it in his early 30s, when it was eventually published by HarperCollins.

“I was very bugged by this question of why there weren’t more kids like me at places like Yale… why isn’t there more upward mobility in the