I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively… - JD Vance

[On attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East from forces connected to Iran] They have attacked, certain militia groups have attacked and I think we've done the right thing, a proportionate response. If they hit us, we have to hit them back but if you're talking about an attack on the Iranian mainland, that would be a significant escalation right now that would be a mistake.

As a culture, we had no heroes. Certainly not any politician — Barack Obama was then the most admired man in America (and likely still is), but even when the country was enraptured by his rise, most Middletonians viewed him suspiciously. George W. Bush had few fans in 2008. Many loved Bill Clinton, but many more saw him as the symbol of American moral decay, and Ronald Reagan was long dead. We loved the military but had no George S. Patton figure in the modern army. I doubt my neighbors could even name a high-ranking military officer. The space program, long a source of pride, had gone the way of the dodo, and with it the celebrity astronauts. Nothing united us with the core fabric of American society. We felt trapped in two seemingly unwinnable wars, in which a disproportionate share of the fighters came from our neighborhood, and in an economy that failed to deliver the most basic promise of the American Dream — a steady wage.

That said, I do hope that readers of this book will be able to take from it an appreciation of how class and family affect the poor without filtering their views through a racial prism.