pb2020 American Book Award winner, Walter Lillian Lowenfels Criticism Award br Weatherford Award winner, nonfictionb p With hundreds of thousands of copies sold, a Ron Howard movie in the works, and the rise of its author as a media personality, J. D. Vance's iHillbilly Elegy A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisisi has defined Appalachia for much of the nation. What abouti Hillbilly Elegyi accounts for this explosion of interest during this period of political turmoil Why have its ideas raised so much controversy And how can debates about the book catalyze new, more inclusive political agendas for the region's futureppiAppalachian Reckoningi is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow iHillbilly Elegyi has cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyondi Hillbilly Elegyi to allow Appalachians from varied backgrounds to tell their own diverse and complex stories through an imaginative blend of scholarship, prose, poetry, and pho