#2 in Politics & society
Evicted
- 448
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 3 weeks on the list, peaked at #7
- Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
- PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award
- Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
- The Stowe Prize for Writing to Advance Social Justice
- National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction
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Our view
“Evicted” makes the housing crisis concrete by staying with eight Milwaukee families as they struggle to keep a roof overhead. Desmond did his fieldwork among the people he writes about, and joins a sociologist’s evidence to stories told with evident care. Readers call the book eye-opening and painful in equal measure; the difficulty lies in the subject, never in the prose. Some say it changed how they see landlords and rent.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City is a 2016 nonfiction book by American sociologist Matthew Desmond. Set in the poorest areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the 2008 financial crisis and its immediate aftermath, the book follows eight families struggling to pay rent to their landlords, many of whom face eviction. Through a year of ethnographic fieldwork, Desmond's goal is to highlight the issues of extreme poverty, affordable housing, and economic exploitation in the United States.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 9.0 across 289 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 66% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Politics & society average of 8.0. That is how 8.8 comes out. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.8 | 22 | 8% |
| Hardcover | 9.0 | 267 | 92% |
Frequently asked
How long is Evicted?
It has 448 pages — longer than 71% of the ranked books in Politics & society.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Politics & society — with scores between 8.2 and 8.9, closest to this book.
