
Poverty, by America
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Narrated by:
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Dion Graham
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By:
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Matthew Desmond
About this listen
#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.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Oprah Daily, Time, The Star Tribune, Vulture, The Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Public Library, Esquire, California Review of Books, She Reads, Library Journal
“Urgent and accessible . . . Its moral force is a gut punch.”—The New Yorker
Longlisted for the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.
Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.
©2023 Matthew Desmond (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Interview: Matthew Desmond Says We Know How to End Poverty, So What Are We Waiting For?
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Story
The Color of Compromise takes listeners on a historical journey: from America's early colonial days through slavery and the Civil War, covering the tragedy of Jim Crow laws and the victories of the Civil Rights era, to today's Black Lives Matter movement. Author Jemar Tisby reveals the obvious - and the far more subtle - ways the American church has compromised what the Bible teaches about human dignity and equality.
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A Challenging Review to Write
- By Maximus on 02-19-19
By: Jemar Tisby
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Broke in America
- Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty
- By: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Colleen Shaddox, Bomani Jones - foreword
- Narrated by: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, Colleen Shaddox, JD Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly 40 million people in the United States live below the poverty line - about $26,200 for a family of four. Low-income families and individuals are everywhere, from cities to rural communities. While poverty is commonly seen as a personal failure, or a deficiency of character or knowledge, it's actually the result of bad policy. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped - not because we lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to.
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very left leaning
- By Bert Sloan on 09-06-22
By: Joanne Samuel Goldblum, and others
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Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
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Describes a well funded international fascist cult
- By marwalk on 03-24-25
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It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism
- By: Senator Bernie Sanders, John Nichols
- Narrated by: Senator Bernie Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s OK to be angry about capitalism. Reflecting on our turbulent times, Senator Bernie Sanders takes on the billionaire class and speaks blunt truths about our country’s failure to address the destructive nature of a system that is fueled by uncontrolled greed and rigidly committed to prioritizing corporate profits over the needs of ordinary Americans.
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A true and unbiased understanding of politics today
- By Sassy monster on 02-21-23
By: Senator Bernie Sanders, and others
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The Color of Law
- A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- By: Richard Rothstein
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, he incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
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Better suited to print than audio
- By ProfGolf on 02-04-18
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Caste
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
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Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson
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The Bible Says So
- What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues
- By: Dan McClellan
- Narrated by: Dan McClellan
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The Bible is the world’s most influential book, but do we really know what it says? Every day across social media and in homes, businesses, and public spaces, people try to cut debate short by claiming that "the Bible says so!" However, they commonly disagree about what it actually does and doesn't say, particularly when it comes to socially significant issues. For instance, does the Bible say we should be on the lookout for an antichrist associated with the number 666? Does it say women shouldn’t wear revealing clothing? Does it say it’s okay to hit your kids?
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Must read!
- By Lisa on 05-26-25
By: Dan McClellan
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White Trash
- The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
- By: Nancy Isenberg
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash.
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I have lived this experience and failed badly.
- By James W. Hoffpauir on 08-26-23
By: Nancy Isenberg
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Poverty for Profit
- How Corporations Get Rich Off America's Poor
- By: Anne Kim
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lam
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including antipoverty programs. States and local governments spend tens of billions more. Ironically, these enormous sums fuel the "corporate poverty complex," a vast web of hidden industries and entrenched private-sector interests that profit from the bureaucracies regulating the lives of the poor.
By: Anne Kim
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Undue Burden
- Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America
- By: Shefali Luthra
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar Young, Shefali Luthra
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the impact was immediate: by 2024, abortion was virtually unavailable or significantly restricted in 21 states. In Undue Burden, reporter Shefali Luthra traces the unforgettable stories of patients faced with one of the most personal decisions of their lives.
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Women's reproductive rights stripped
- By Constance L. Brown on 06-11-24
By: Shefali Luthra
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The Poverty Paradox
- Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity
- By: Mark Robert Rank
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The paradox of poverty amidst plenty has plagued the United States throughout the twenty-first century—why should the wealthiest country in the world also have the highest rates of poverty among the industrialized nations? Based on his decades-long research and scholarship, one of the nation's leading authorities provides the answer. In The Poverty Paradox, Mark Robert Rank develops his unique perspective for understanding this puzzle.
By: Mark Robert Rank
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The System
- Who Rigged It, How We Fix It
- By: Robert B. Reich
- Narrated by: Robert B. Reich
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Millions of Americans have lost confidence in our political and economic system. After years of stagnant wages, volatile job markets, and an unwillingness by those in power to deal with profound threats such as climate change, there is a mounting sense that the system is fixed, serving only those select few with enough money to secure a controlling stake. With the characteristic clarity and passion that has made him a central civil voice, Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy.
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Turn Off Your TV. Wake Up and Listen Now!
- By Benchmark on 03-25-20
By: Robert B. Reich
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The Poverty Industry
- The Exploitation of America's Most Vulnerable Citizens
- By: Daniel L. Hatcher
- Narrated by: Colleen Patrick
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Government aid doesn't always go where it's supposed to. Foster care agencies team up with companies to take disability and survivor benefits from abused and neglected children. States and their revenue consultants use illusory schemes to siphon Medicaid funds intended for children and the poor into general state coffers. Child support payments for foster children and families on public assistance are converted into government revenue. And the poverty industry keeps expanding.
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Good information, terrible audio.
- By Carolyn on 03-17-20
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How Fascism Works
- The Politics of Us and Them
- By: Jason Stanley
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century.
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A Warning Too Clear to Ignore
- By Chip Auger on 10-30-18
By: Jason Stanley
Excellent and informative
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His comments/statistics about the effects of the government's "economic impact payments" during COVID are amazing.
I like his approach of asking who benefits from the poor and keeping them poor, instead of derogatory comments about the poor.
Even though his solutions aren't "pie in the sky," there will be stiff opposition from the rich.
Essential Information and Possible Solutions
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He makes it clear that Poverty is not a choice for the Poor and lays out reasonable changes to Tax Policy that would make a significant dent in the unforgivable Inequality extant in America today.
Equality of Opportunity brings Freedom. We could make it happen if only we tried. Five Stars *****
An excellent case for Economic Policy Change!
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Great read
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What a performance by Dion Graham!
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This Should Be Required School Reading
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Challenging outdated theories
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Great read
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Real problem!
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Education
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