I grew up in rural northern Michigan. My family lived in comfort, never lacking essentials. Yet, many of those living around me had difficulty making ends meet. Many lacked health insurance and year-round jobs. As a child, I viewed my community as normal and typical of the American experience. In many ways, it was–in part, that is the point of this list. At the time, I didn’t know that we could do better for those around me who worked so hard daily. Now I do. I selected these books to highlight the vast disparities between those with and without the comfort and luxury of good health.
I wrote
The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus: How Our Unequal Society Fails Us During Outbreaks
From the opening page, Desmond challenges us to confront our role in maintaining poverty in America. He uses simple examples: Why do we view a tax deduction for home mortgage interest differently than a housing voucher for a low-income renter? Both are government subsidies, yet many people consider the first one “earned” and the second one a “handout.”
Desmond provides many similar examples that force us to confront the varied ways that our society maintains an ongoing underclass. He makes clear that the maintenance of poverty is a choice. If we truly want to end poverty, we can, and he provides a roadmap for us to do so. So, do we maintain the status quo or join Desmond as a “poverty abolitionist?” It’s our choice.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.
“Urgent and accessible . . . Its moral force is a gut punch.”—The New Yorker
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023: The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, Newsweek, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Elle, Salon, Lit Hub, Kirkus Reviews
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow…
People often think of poverty as an urban phenomenon, but many of the most impoverished locations in the US are distinctly rural–and many of the families living in these places have faced poverty for decades.
This book took me on a tour through several of these towns in the hills of Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and other small towns dotted throughout the country. Along the way, I saw how perpetual poverty is derived from the deep and long-lasting history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the firm exploitation of the less fortunate. Each of these, and more, bring poverty to the present.
This book forced me to consider the many simultaneous and interrelated aspects of poverty and explained to me why poverty of place is so hard to change without concentrated and multifaceted effort.
A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.
“This book forces you to see American poverty in a whole new light.” (Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America and Evicted)
Three of the nation’s top scholars – known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest people to its poorest places. Based on a fresh, data-driven approach, they discover that America’s most disadvantaged communities are not the big cities that get the most notice.…
An enthralling portrait of the Bloomsbury Group’s key figures told through a rich collection of intimate photographs. Photography framed the world of the Bloomsbury Group. The thousands of photographs surviving in albums kept by Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, and Lytton Strachey, among others, today offer us a private…
Paul Farmer does not let you off the hook. When he sees injustice and inequality, he doesn’t accept answers like “it’s too costly to help” or “it isn’t practical to change.” He crusades for the underprivileged and demands that you step up alongside him, free your imagination, and accept nothing other than solutions to the pressing problems of health equity across the world.
I love this book because it is a call to arms for all that Farmer believes in.
Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor. This 'peculiarly modern inequality' that permeates AIDS, TB, malaria, and typhoid in the modern world, and that feeds emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases such as Ebola and cholera, is laid bare in Farmer's harrowing stories of sickness and suffering. Challenging the accepted methodologies of epidemiology…
Life expectancy among the working-class population in the United States was decreasing at an astounding rate well before the Covid-19 pandemic. While I was aware of growing inequality and decreasing access to health care for many, I didn’t realize how desperate the conditions of life seemed for many working-class Americans.
This book forced me to confront the uncomfortable reality of the health crisis among the many blue-collar workers living in the heartland of America.
A New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New Statesman Book to Read
From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class
Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row-a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the…
It's 1943, and World War II has gripped the nation, including the Stilwell family in Jacksonville, Alabama. Rationing, bomb drills, patriotism, and a changing South barrage their way of life. Neighboring Fort McClellan has brought the world to their doorstep in the form of young soldiers from all over the…
While this book is fiction, it is impossible to avoid knowing that there are multitudes of children like young Damon Fields across rural America. Born on the edge, you know he is just one false move away from falling into despair. That this fall comes from a series of tiny slips and not a single large blunder makes the plot all the more poignant.
The fault of his demise is not entirely his, however. To reach the bottom, he must be failed by our schools, our healthcare system, and our social safety net too. That this bitterly sorrowful book retells Dickens simply shows how little progress we’ve made in the past two centuries.
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…
How can we make society more resilient to outbreaks and avoid forcing the poor and working class to bear the brunt of their harm?
When an epidemic outbreak occurs, the most physical and financial harm historically falls upon the people who can least afford it: the economically and socially marginalized. Where people live and work, how they commute and socialize, and more have a huge impact on the risks we bear during an outbreak. In The Rich Flee and the Poor Take the Bus, economist Troy Tassier examines examples ranging from the 430 BCE plague of Athens to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate why marginalized groups bear the largest burden of epidemic costs—and how to avoid these systemic failures in the future.
The links between epidemics and social issues—such as inequality, discrimination, and financial insecurity—are not always direct or clear. Tassier reveals truths hidden in plain sight, from the way population density statistics can be misleading to the often-misunderstood differences between risk and uncertainty. The disproportionate harm experienced by marginalized individuals is not the product of their own decisions; instead, the collective choices of society and the tangled web of interactions across people and communities leave these groups most exposed to the perils of epidemics.
However, there is reason to hope. Utilizing a wealth of economic and population data, Tassier argues that we can leverage lessons learned from historic and recent outbreaks to design better economic and social policies and more just institutions to protect everyone in society when inevitable future epidemics arrive.
The plan was insane. The trap seemed to snap shut on Bruce and Maggie Tate, an isolation forced on them by the pandemic and America's growing political factionalism. Something had to change.
Maggie's surprising answer: buy a boat, learn to pilot it, and embark on the Great Loop. With no…
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of…
