Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and principal investigator of the Eviction Lab. He earned his doctorate in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2010, after studying justice and communication at Arizona State University. His research centers on poverty, housing, race and public policy.

Desmond writes social science with the close observation and narrative momentum of literary journalism. Evicted follows eight Milwaukee families, along with two landlords, through rent arrears, forced moves and the search for another place to live. Its scenes are grounded in extended fieldwork, while its larger argument recasts eviction as a force that can deepen poverty rather than merely result from it.

Published in 2016, Evicted won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Desmond’s other books include On the Fireline, about wildland firefighters, and Poverty, by America, which broadens his inquiry from housing to the structures that perpetuate economic hardship.

Begin with Evicted. It is Desmond’s clearest meeting point between individual lives and structural analysis: readers come to know people such as Arleen and her sons while seeing how landlords, courts and housing policy shape their choices. For a more argument-driven companion, continue with Poverty, by America.