I'm gonna get academic on you, and make a strong recommendation that you buy the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, currently the #2 book on the non-fiction best seller list.

https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture/dp/0062300547

Buckeye connection: the author (who is only 31) graduated from The Ohio State in two years, summa cum laude, while working 3 jobs. So yeah - he's one of the more brilliant Buckeyes in recent years.

The book is a memoir about his upbringing in Middletown, Ohio in a family of self-described hillbillies from Kentucky. What it really is, though, is a stark look at life for poor people in small towns in middle America. The lack of jobs, the drug abuse, the family breakdown - it's all covered in a brutal but brilliant, short book. 

Vance managed to go from near high school dropout to the Marines to tOSU to Yale Law School, and his perspective on the challenges of his dysfunctional family and the working class in cities like Middletown is fascinating.

Buy it, read it on a Tuesday when there's no football, support a Buckeye.