Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Every day, in cities across the country, thousands of people are evicted from their homes. Eviction is traumatic for everyone, but for the extremely poor, it's a waking nightmare that runs on repeat. Evictions can make you lose your job (as you're forced to spend your day moving your belongings or trying to find a place to stay), they can make you ineligible for public housing, they can get you rejected by private landlords, they can force you to move into unsafe locations, they can make you impose on friends and family, they can force you to stay in homeless shelters, and on and on and on. The home is supposed to be the stable foundation of a person's life, and when they're forced out of it, it can uproot everything else along with it. This book delves into the lives of several Milwaukee residents, across a surprisingly wide spectrum of life experiences, who had their lives changed by eviction.

This book won its author a slew of prizes, including a Pulitzer, and with good reason. It's an intense collection of stories, many of them intertwined, giving you a heartfelt and crushing view of its subjects. If you're a fan of narrative nonfiction, this deep dive into the world of deep poverty and housing insecurity is one that will stick with you for a long time.