This March, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is honored to welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond for an in-person discussion and signing on his new book, POVERTY, BY AMERICA. Desmond will be in conversation with PA State Representative, Malcolm Kenyatta. To enter the signing line, your copy of POVERTY, BY AMERICA must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. This event is free and open to the public.
The bestselling author of EVICTED reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.
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.
About the Author:
Matthew Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and the founding director of the Eviction Lab. His last book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, 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.
Malcolm Kenyatta was elected to serve as state representative for the 181st Legislative District, Philadelphia County, in 2018. He is a product of Philadelphia public schools and a graduate of Temple University and Harvard Kennedy School’s Senior Executives in State and Local Government. He recently earned a Master of Science in Strategic Communication from Drexel University. He currently serves as vice chair of the Philadelphia House Delegation and as a member of the Governor’s Taskforce on Suicide Prevention and holds a host of committee leadership positions. As the first openly LGBTQ person of color and one of the youngest members elected to the PA General Assembly, he is deeply committed to creating an equitable and inclusive society.
