After Coming Up Short
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
Reich made you furious about rigged labor markets—Desmond turns that fury into a blowtorch aimed at every policy choice that keeps the poor poor by design. This isn't hand-wringing about poverty; it's a scalpel dissection of how we the comfortable exploit structural inequality for cheaper services and tax breaks, all while pretending scarcity is inevitable. Sharp, empathetic, and utterly uninterested in letting anyone off the hook.