Excerpt from Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In America's meatpacking plants, two amputations occur each week: A band saw lops off someone's finger or hand. Pickers in Amazon warehouses have access to vending machines dispensing free Advil and Tylenol. Slum housing spreads asthma, its mold and cockroach allergens seeping into young lungs and airways, and it poisons children with lead, causing irreversible damage to their tiny central nervous systems and brains. Poverty is the cancer that forms in the cells of those who live near petrochemical plants and waste incinerators. Roughly one in four children living in poverty have untreated cavities, which can morph into tooth decay, causing sharp pain and spreading infection to their faces and even brains. With public insurance reimbursing only a fraction of dental care costs, many families simply cannot afford regular trips to the dentist. Thirty million Americans remain completely uninsured a decade after the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Excerpted from Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond. Copyright © 2023 by Matthew Desmond. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.