New Canaan Library is pleased to present a special speaking engagement with Matthew Desmond, acclaimed sociologist and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Evicted. Mr. Desmond will introduce his latest book, Poverty, by America, the #1 nonfiction book on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller list.

Noted as one of the most anticipated books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, Newsweek, and Minneapolis Star Tribune, among others, Poverty, by America makes a “provocative and compelling” (NPR) argument about why poverty persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

As the richest country in the world, America has more poverty than any other advanced democracy, with one child in 8 going without basic necessities. In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly, and unknowingly, keep poor people poor.

Matthew Desmond is a professor of sociology at Princeton University. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he joined the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow. In addition to Poverty, by America, he is the author of four books, including Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, Carnegie Medal, and PEN / John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction. The principal investigator of The Eviction Lab, Desmond’s research focuses on poverty in America, city life, housing insecurity, public policy, racial inequality, and ethnography. He is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, and the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award. A contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Desmond was listed in 2016 among the Politico 50, as one of “fifty people across the country who are most influencing the national political debate.”