Reviews
"Astonishing... Desmond has set a new standard for reporting on poverty." --Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times Book Review "After reading Evicted , you'll realize you cannot have a serious conversation about poverty without talking about housing. . . . The book is that good, and it's that unignorable."-- Jennifer Senior, New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2016 "This book gave me a better sense of what it is like to be very poor in this country than anything else I have read. . . . It is beautifully written, thought-provoking, and unforgettable." --Bill Gates "Inside my copy of his book, Mr. Desmond scribbled a note: 'home = life.' Too many in Washington don't understand that. We need a government that will partner with communities, from Appalachia to the suburbs to downtown Cleveland, to make hard work pay off for all these overlooked Americans." --Senator Sherrod Brown , Wall Street Journal "My God, what [ Evicted ] lays bare about American poverty. It is devastating and infuriating and a necessary read." --Roxane Gay , author of Bad Feminist and Difficult Women "Written with the vividness of a novel, [ Evicted ] offers a dark mirror of middle-class America's obsession with real estate, laying bare the workings of the low end of the market, where evictions have become just another part of an often lucrative business model." --Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times "In spare and penetrating prose . . . Desmond has made it impossible to consider poverty without grappling with the role of housing. This pick [as best book of 2016] was not close." --Carlos Lozada, Washington Post "An essential piece of reportage about poverty and profit in urban America." -- Geoff Dyer, The Guardian 's Best Holiday Reads 2016 "It doesn't happen every week (or every month, or even year), but every once in a while a book comes along that changes the national conversation. . . . Evicted looks to be one of those books." --Pamela Paul, editor of the New York Times Book Review "Should be required reading in an election year, or any other." --Entertainment Weekly "Powerful, monstrously effective . . . The power of this book abides in the indelible impression left by its stories." --Jill Leovy, The American Scholar "Gripping and important . . . [Desmond's] portraits are vivid and unsettling." --Jason DeParle, New York Review of Books "An exquisitely crafted, meticulously researched exploration of life on the margins, providing a voice to people who have been shamefully ignored--or, worse, demonized--by opinion makers over the course of decades." --The Boston Globe "[An] impressive work of scholarship . . . As Mr. Desmond points out, eviction has been neglected by urban sociologists, so his account fills a gap. His methodology is scrupulous." -- Wall Street Journal, "Astonishing... Desmond has set a new standard for reporting on poverty." --Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times Book Review "After reading Evicted , you'll realize you cannot have a serious conversation about poverty without talking about housing. . . . The book is that good, and it's that unignorable."-- Jennifer Senior, New York Times "This book gave me a better sense of what it is like to be very poor in this country than anything else I have read. . . . It is beautifully written, thought-provoking, and unforgettable." --Bill Gates "Inside my copy of his book, Mr. Desmond scribbled a note: 'home = life.' Too many in Washington don't understand that. We need a government that will partner with communities, from Appalachia to the suburbs to downtown Cleveland, to make hard work pay off for all these overlooked Americans." --Senator Sherrod Brown , Wall Street Journal "My God, what [ Evicted ] lays bare about American poverty. It is devastating and infuriating and a necessary read." --Roxane Gay , author of Bad Feminist and Difficult Women "Written with the vividness of a novel, [ Evicted ] offers a dark mirror of middle-class America's obsession with real estate, laying bare the workings of the low end of the market, where evictions have become just another part of an often lucrative business model." --Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times "In spare and penetrating prose . . . Desmond has made it impossible to consider poverty without grappling with the role of housing. This pick [as best book of 2016] was not close." --Carlos Lozada, Washington Post "An essential piece of reportage about poverty and profit in urban America." -- Geoff Dyer, The Guardian "It doesn't happen every week (or every month, or even year), but every once in a while a book comes along that changes the national conversation. . . . Evicted looks to be one of those books." --Pamela Paul, editor of the New York Times Book Review "Should be required reading in an election year, or any other." --Entertainment Weekly "Powerful, monstrously effective . . . The power of this book abides in the indelible impression left by its stories." --Jill Leovy, The American Scholar "Gripping and important . . . [Desmond's] portraits are vivid and unsettling." --Jason DeParle, New York Review of Books "An exquisitely crafted, meticulously researched exploration of life on the margins, providing a voice to people who have been shamefully ignored--or, worse, demonized--by opinion makers over the course of decades." --The Boston Globe "[An] impressive work of scholarship . . . As Mr. Desmond points out, eviction has been neglected by urban sociologists, so his account fills a gap. His methodology is scrupulous." -- Wall Street Journal
