LLL Presents: Poverty, by America

In his new book, Matthew Desmond 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. He is joined in conversation by fellow scholar about housing and poverty in America, author, and activist Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor. Andrea Elliott, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her book Invisible Child, will introduce the speakers.

This event is free but ticketed. Please visit the Labyrinth Books website for more details.

Matthew Desmond is professor of sociology at Princeton University. He is the author of four books, including Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, and is the principal investigator of The Eviction Lab at Princeton. Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor’s Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She is the author, in addition, of From #Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation. Yamahtta-Taylor is contributing writer at The New Yorker and professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University. Andrea Elliott is investigative reporter for The New York Times and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, once for feature writing, and once for her book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City.

This event is co-presented by Labyrinth Books and The Princeton Public Library and cosponsored by Princeton University’s Humanities Council, School for Public and International Affairs, Sociology Department, African American Studies Department, Anthropology Department, Economics Department, and the Kahneman Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Public Policy at Princeton.