Explore Creative Portland

Events

Tours

Arts & Culture List

Resources

Programs

About Us

headerPrimaryMenu

Venues

Organizations

Creative Portland App

Donate

headerSecondary

#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.

Why does the United States, the richest country on earth, have more poverty than any other advanced democracy? This is the question that acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond answers in his “fleet, fierce manifesto” (New York Times Book Review). Drawing on history, research, and original reporting, he shows how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, and stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities. 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—to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.

Matthew Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and the founding director of Princeton's Eviction Lab. His last book, Evicted, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, among others. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Desmond is also a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Literary Arts

Co-presented by Print: A  Bookstore and Mechanics’ Hall Charitable Library

Matthew Desmond discusses POVERTY, BY AMERICA with Nicole Witherbee at Stevens Square Community Center

Stevens Square Community Center

Matthew Desmond discusses POVERTY, BY AMERICA with Nicole Witherbee at Stevens Square Community Center

Co-presented by Print: A Bookstore and Mechanics’ Hall Charitable Library

Location

Event Category

Address & Contact

Date

Additional Info

CONTACT US