I’d already read Evicted by Matthew Desmond, and I was very impressed with the depth of Demond’s writing. So, it’s no surprise that I picked up Poverty, by America (2023)–especially after Obama recommended it. In Poverty, by America, Desmond pushes back hard against the stereotype that poor people are lazy, maybe stupid, and could get out of their circumstances if they just tried harder. He delves into how much the poor have stacked against them, and how these circumstances help the ones who already have more than enough. This includes […]

I got pretty far into this book before double-checking that it really WAS non-fiction. Because the actions of these slumlords were so horrific that I couldn’t believe the author actually witnessed them. But it’s all true — Desmond spent years gathering data about eviction, specifically following 8 families in Milwaukee as their lives (and addresses) changed. “Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word […]