Article author:
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Pulitzer Prize-winning Matthew Desmond's first book, Kicked Out, isn't just a study of who is poor in the world's richest countries. I also ask why.
Crown plans to publish "Poverty, by America" on March 21, 2023. According to The Crown, Desmond chronicles how the wealthy, knowingly or unwittingly, harm the poor.
"Books about poverty, including 'Evicted,' tend to be books about the poor and tend to give testimonials," Desmond said in a statement issued by The Crown on Wednesday. “But they are unable to answer the most fundamental question: Why is there such poverty in this rich country? We have learned that that question requires a different approach. To understand the causes of poverty, we need to look in the mirror: We — safe, insured, homeowners, college graduates, lucky — we are , is someone responsible for all this suffering?”
Desmond’s Evictions: Poverty and Benefits in America’s Urban Areas, published in 2016, explores eight families living in impoverished neighborhoods in Milwaukee. is focused on Besides the Pulitzer Prize, the book won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Former President Barack Obama named this book on his list of favorite books he read in 2017.
Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine.
