--- title: Poverty, by America: 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 description: Find out why "Poverty, by America" by Matthew Desmond is on TIME's list of the must-read books of the year. canonical: https://time.com/collections/must-read-books-2023/6332589/poverty-by-america/ article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-11-14T12:30:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-03T00:25:30.604Z og:title: 'Poverty, by America' Is One of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 og:description: Here's why it made the list og:url: https://time.com/collections/must-read-books-2023/6332589/poverty-by-america/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc3fd30eb8ce3844e/698a41f5cabb1d3939e51eab/PovertyByAmerica.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 'Poverty, by America' Is One of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Poverty, by America' Is One of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 twitter:description: Here's why it made the list twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc3fd30eb8ce3844e/698a41f5cabb1d3939e51eab/PovertyByAmerica.jpg?branch=production&width=1920&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Nov 14, 2023 # Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff  Why is there [so much poverty](https://time.com/6283782/america-poverty-all-wrong-essay/) in the richest nation in the world? That’s the question acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond sets out to answer with _Poverty, by America._ The topic is a familiar one for the author, whose 2016 book, the [Pulitzer Prize-winning](https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/matthew-desmond) _Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City_, examined the role poverty plays in America’s housing crisis. Here, Desmond expands his purview and discovers that wealthy and middle class Americans are complicit, both intentionally and unintentionally, in a broken system that exploits the poor. Desmond argues that there must be a radical overhaul of U.S. policies on poverty, which are simply not working. “No state had a child poverty rate higher than Mississippi’s, at roughly 28%,” he writes, “which is also the child poverty rate of Costa Rica.” What Desmond’s book so deftly shows is that poverty is not a personal failure. It’s the result of a society willing to turn a blind eye to its own inequities. —_Shannon Carlin_ **Buy Now:** _Poverty, by America_ on [Bookshop](https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9780593239919) | [Amazon](https://amzn.to/3Qr0Jtr) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/must-read-books-2023/6332589/poverty-by-america/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/must-read-books-2023/6332589/poverty-by-america/"},"headline":"Poverty, by America","datePublished":"2023-11-14T12:30:40.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:25:30.604Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/must-read-books-2023/6332589/poverty-by-america/","keywords":["Books","list","best books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc3fd30eb8ce3844e/698a41f5cabb1d3939e51eab/PovertyByAmerica.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc3fd30eb8ce3844e/698a41f5cabb1d3939e51eab/PovertyByAmerica.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/must-read-books-2023/6332589/poverty-by-america/","name":"Poverty, by America"}}]}] ```