Here are 17 books that Fixer-Upper fans have personally recommended if you like
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After decades writing about how to improve the lives of low-income children through education, I concluded that I had to writing about housing policy too. Government housing laws essentially dictate where kids go to school in America. In addition, since writing in college about Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for president, in which he brought together a multiracial coalition of working people, I’ve been obsessed with finding ways to bring those groups together again. Reforms of housing policy in a number of states has done just that: united working people across racial lines who were sick of being excluded – by government fiat – from places that provide the best opportunities.
The Color of Law does a brilliant job of making clear that racial segregation in America is not merely the result of market forces or individual choices; it was manufactured by government through a series of twentieth-century policies: racial zoning, redlining, and enforcement of racially restrictive covenants. The effects are still felt today.
I modeled my own book after Rothstein’s and updated his analysis to show that today, economically discriminatory zoning laws have replaced racially discriminatory practices, which helps explain why racial segregation has declined by 30 percent since 1970, but income segregation has doubled.
Widely heralded as a "masterful" (The Washington Post) and "essential" (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law offers "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation" (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced…
I am an anthropologist and studied homelessness in Paris and London for the last decade. I was drawn into the world of people on the streets when I moved to London and started observing their parallel world. I spent almost a year with people on the street in London and two years in Paris. I volunteered in day centers, safe injection facilities, and soup kitchens and slept in a homeless shelter. Since I finished my first book on my observations in Paris, I have advised both policymakers on homelessness and written countless journalistic articles. My goal is always to provide a clearer picture of homelessness through the eyes of the people themselves.
I met Matthew Desmond before he became one of the youngest Professors with his own center at Princeton University. He was visiting London, had just published his first book, and was still finishing the research for this book.
Desmond did an enormous amount of field research; he spent months living in a trailer park, on top of thousands of hours in archives and courtrooms where eviction cases are decided. The result is the best book I have ever read about poverty.
What happens when ‘normal people’ get evicted? Desmond’s story is rich and personal, and that is what we need: we need to understand the lives of poor people better in order to finally decide that we must change the systems that put them there.
*WINNER OF THE 2017 PULITZER PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION* 'Beautifully written, thought-provoking, and unforgettable ... If you want a good understanding of how the issues that cause poverty are intertwined, you should read this book' Bill Gates, Best Books of 2017
Arleen spends nearly all her money on rent but is kicked out with her kids in Milwaukee's coldest winter for years. Doreen's home is so filthy her family call it 'the rat hole'. Lamar, a wheelchair-bound ex-soldier, tries to work his way out of debt for his boys. Scott, a nurse turned addict, lives in a gutted-out trailer. This is…
After decades writing about how to improve the lives of low-income children through education, I concluded that I had to writing about housing policy too. Government housing laws essentially dictate where kids go to school in America. In addition, since writing in college about Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for president, in which he brought together a multiracial coalition of working people, I’ve been obsessed with finding ways to bring those groups together again. Reforms of housing policy in a number of states has done just that: united working people across racial lines who were sick of being excluded – by government fiat – from places that provide the best opportunities.
Sheryll Cashin has impressed me ever since we were law school classmates. Now a Georgetown Law Professor, she is not only a brilliant analyst but also a vivid storyteller.
She shows how the high levels of racial and economic segregation that many take for granted is not at all natural and do profound harm to Americans of all backgrounds.
Shows how government created “ghettos” and affluent white space and entrenched a system of American residential caste that is the linchpin of US inequality—and issues a call for abolition.
The iconic Black hood, like slavery and Jim Crow, is a peculiar American institution animated by the ideology of white supremacy. Politicians and people of all colors propagated “ghetto” myths to justify racist policies that concentrated poverty in the hood and created high-opportunity white spaces. In White Space, Black Hood, Sheryll Cashin traces the history of anti-Black residential caste—boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding, and stereotype-driven…
After decades writing about how to improve the lives of low-income children through education, I concluded that I had to writing about housing policy too. Government housing laws essentially dictate where kids go to school in America. In addition, since writing in college about Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for president, in which he brought together a multiracial coalition of working people, I’ve been obsessed with finding ways to bring those groups together again. Reforms of housing policy in a number of states has done just that: united working people across racial lines who were sick of being excluded – by government fiat – from places that provide the best opportunities.
Richard Sander, whom I have known and respected for years, has, with his colleagues, written a deeply comprehensive and authoritative book on the origins of housing segregation, the consequences, and what to do about it.
By comparing highly segregated metropolitan regions with ones that are less segregated, the authors demonstrate that high levels of housing segregation provides the central explanation for a whole host of other racial gap in America, including those related to educational achievement, employment, and mortality rates. The book is a stirring call for action.
Reducing residential segregation is the best way to reduce racial inequality in the United States. African American employment rates, earnings, test scores, even longevity all improve sharply as residential integration increases. Yet far too many participants in our policy and political conversations have come to believe that the battle to integrate America's cities cannot be won. Richard Sander, Yana Kucheva, and Jonathan Zasloff write that the pessimism surrounding desegregation in housing arises from an inadequate understanding of how segregation has evolved and how policy interventions have already set many metropolitan areas on the path to integration.
I’m an American author who lived three years in a backyard tiny house with my family: husband, two young children, and a part-time dog. We wanted to live a bigger life, focused on our favorite activities and most important relationships. I wrote this book during the first spring of COVID-19, partly as a way to record my family’s experience weathering a pandemic in under 300 square feet, and partly as a way to explore the ways that children can be resourceful when life gives them a pinch. I've been a writer for most of my life, and I love to teach writing. Ark is my first middle-grade novel, and my lucky thirteenth book to publish!
When she is bested by the overwhelming expense of paying for a bedroom in Britain, the author returns home to Cornwall, where she fixes up her father’s old work shed and there takes up residency.
A potent real-life story about a community that is so loved by vacationers that it loses its accessibility for locals, and about a young woman who finds an unusual way to make a home there, with hardly a wall separating her from the elements—especially the wild-surf ocean—that she feels she must live near in order to survive.
The story of a personal housing crisis that led to a discovery of the true value of home.
*'You will marvel at the beauty of this book, and rage at the injustice it reveals' George Monbiot*
*'Incredibly moving. To find peace and a sense of home after a life so profoundly affected by the housing crisis, is truly inspirational' Raynor Winn, bestselling author of The Salt Path*
Aged thirty-one, Catrina Davies was renting a box-room in a house in Bristol, which she shared with four other adults and a child. Working several jobs and never knowing if she could make…
I found myself giving up a high-flying life and successful IT career at age 38 to live my dream in the African bush, getting to know wild elephant families intimately and ultimately helping to save them from the actions of corrupt officials, unethical sport-hunters, poachers, and land claimants. It took plenty of tenacity and endurance to make a difference. Books have long been an important influence in my life, as they are for so many. I want to share a different insight and inspire you to ponder which books changed you. Here are five books that helped shape my life, and the thought-provoking reasons why.
So much about this true story was evocative to me at a time when I didn’t yet understand anything much about the real Africa.
Kuki’s perfect prose through adversity and new beginnings had me right there with her in an entirely different world where ordinary people were experiencing extraordinary things.
I read this book over and over again, with joy and tears, before finally making my own move to live in the wilds of Africa.
'Often, at the hour of day when the savannah grass is streaked with silver, and pale gold rims the silhouettes of the hills, I drive with my dogs up to the Mukutan, to watch the sun setting behind the lake, and the evening shadows settle over the valleys and plains of the Laikipia plateau.'
Kuki Gallmann's haunting memoir of bringing up a family in Kenya in the 1970s first with her husband Paulo, and then alone, is part elegaic celebration, part tragedy, and part love letter to the magical spirit of Africa.
I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, in a neighborhood that was stable, safe, and stimulating. After my freshman year in college, I signed up for an “urban experience” in Detroit. It turned out to be the summer of the Detroit riots. I woke up to U.S. Army vehicles rumbling into the park across from my apartment. Over the next month, I witnessed the looting and burning of whole neighborhoods. I remember thinking: what a waste! Why are we throwing away neighborhoods like Kleenex? I have been trying to answer that question ever since.
I’ve often thought that discrimination against poor people is the last socially acceptable prejudice. Kahlenberg proves me correct.
While racial segregation has declined, economic segregation has increased exponentially. Kahlenberg exposes the myths and false arguments that justify economic discrimination. He shows that excluding the poor is most common in liberal communities on the two coasts.
Research demonstrates that where we grow up has a powerful effect on our ability to succeed in school and the job market, demolishing the idea that we are a meritocracy and that rich people deserve to live behind invisible walls in privileged communities.
The last, acceptable form of prejudice in America is based on class and executed through state-sponsored economic discrimination, which is hard to see because it is much more subtle than raw racism.
While the American meritocracy officially denounces prejudice based on race and gender, it has spawned a new form of bias against those with less education and income. Millions of working-class Americans have their opportunity blocked by exclusionary snob zoning. These government policies make housing unaffordable, frustrate the goals of the civil rights movement, and lock in inequality in our urban and suburban landscapes.
It took eight years to write New York, New York, New York, and reading hundreds and hundreds of books about all different aspects of New York past and present. There were lots of brilliant ones along the way, but these five changed how I think about New York, flipped assumptions, created entirely new maps and narratives.
For my money, affordable housing is the biggest issue New York faces right now and this book was one of the happiest, most fascinating surprises in my research. No one should utter that phrase—“affordable housing”—until they read this book, a comprehensive, overview of all the different kinds of affordable housing created in and by New York over the last century. With fabulous imagery from photographer and sociologist David Schaillol, it ultimately becomes an alternative history of what the city has done, which made me hopeful about what it can do if we choose to.
A richly illustrated history of below-market housing in New York, from the 1920s to today
A colorful portrait of the people, places, and policies that have helped make New York City livable, Affordable Housing in New York is a comprehensive, authoritative, and richly illustrated history of the city's public and middle-income housing from the 1920s to today. Plans, models, archival photos, and newly commissioned portraits of buildings and tenants by sociologist and photographer David Schalliol put the efforts of the past century into context, and the book also looks ahead to future prospects for below-market subsidized housing. A dynamic account…
When I studied urban economics at Princeton in the 1970s, theoretical models of urban form were all the rage. Political barriers to urban development such as zoning were dismissed as irrelevant. But as I read more about it, zoning appeared to be the foremost concern of both developers and community members. My service on the Hanover, New Hampshire zoning board made me appreciate why homeowners are so concerned about what happens in their neighborhood. NIMBYs—neighbors who cry “not in my backyard”—are not evil people; they are worried “homevoters” (owners who vote to protect their homes) who cannot diversify their oversized investment. Zoning reforms won’t succeed without addressing their anxieties.
Not to be confused with Bernard Siegan, who wrote approvingly about the absence of zoning in Houston, Bernie Frieden undertook an on-site study of how the San Francisco Bay area became the pioneer in employing new environmental laws to make suburbs even more exclusionary than they were with garden-variety zoning. Unlike many critics of land use regulation, Frieden was an unabashed liberal who simply believed that ordinary people should be able to buy homes in communities as nice as those of the Sierra Club’s directors. Attacked at the time for overstating his case, Frieden now looks prophetic as California wrestles with its housing-cost crisis.
No one likes ticky-tacky houses spread all over the landscape and invading the suburbs, least of all the people who already live there. But are environmentalists and suburbanites right when they object? Bernard Frieden, Professor of Urban Planning at MIT, doesn't think so. At least not when their objections take the form that they have in northern California. In this lively and certainly controversial book, Frieden uncovers a powerful, ideologically driven crusade to keep the average citizen from homeownership and the good life in the suburbs. Written in the best tradition of civic reform, Frieden's observations are a warning signal…
I grew up in New York City on the corner of 16th Street and 7th Avenue in an apartment on the 11th floor. I loved the city’s pace, diversity, and freedom. So, I decided to study New York Jews, to learn about them from not just from census records and institutional reports but also from interviews. After publishing my first book, I followed New York Jews as they moved to other cities, especially Miami and Los Angeles. Recently, I’ve been intrigued by what is often called street photography and the ways photographs let you see all sorts of details that potentially tell a story.
The key to Beryl Satter’s book lies in her title, Family Properties. The book grew out of a daughter’s desire to know her father, who died when she was young. Satter peels back layers of her Jewish father’s fierce advocacy for Blacks in Chicago, his relentless effort to uncover and hold accountable the white men (both Jewish and Christian) who were profiting from the housing segregation that made Blacks desperate to move out of the ghetto. Satter follows her father’s ultimate failure to prevent the exploitation of Blacks. She also reveals the anger directed at him by many Jews who were on the other side. Satter writes with empathy, showing her father’s complexity (he was a landlord as well as a lawyer), and resists the impulse to judge him.
“Beryl Satter's Family Properties is really an incredible book. It is, by far, the best book I've ever read on the relationship between blacks and Jews. That's because it hones in on the relationship between one specific black community and one specific Jewish community and thus revels in the particular humanity of all its actors. In going small, it ultimately goes big.” ―Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
Part family story and part urban history, a landmark investigation of segregation and urban decay in Chicago -- and cities across the nation
The "promised land" for thousands of Southern blacks, postwar Chicago quickly…
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