Summary

In the prologue of Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond gives readers a glimpse of his humble upbringing in Winslow, Arizona. The bank took his family's home when his father lost his job, and Desmond attended Arizona State University by combining loans and scholarships with every job available--barista, telemarketer, wildland firefighter. He observed great wealth at Arizona State and began to wonder about the chasm between the students with BMWs and those with Ford trucks from the 1970s. Then, he attended the University of Wisconsin and began to study the housing crisis while he lived in a mobile home park and a rooming house. Today, Desmond asks difficult questions about why the United States, the richest country on earth, allows one in eight children to live in poverty. Desmond further asks readers to be poverty abolitionists, actively working in the interest of those who struggle...