Why does the United States, the richest country on earth, have more poverty than any other advanced democracy? This is the question that acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond answers in his "fleet, fierce manifesto" (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on history, research, and original reporting, he shows how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor: Some lives are made small so that others may grow. This elegantly written and compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about-and solving-a morally urgent problem. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists-to usher is a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.