The Divide

American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

By: Matt Taibbi

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 14 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis

Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:

Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.

In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.

In The Divide, Matt Taibbi takes readers on a galvanizing journey through both sides of our new system of justice—the fun-house-mirror worlds of the untouchably wealthy and the criminalized poor. He uncovers the startling looting that preceded the financial collapse; a wild conspiracy of billionaire hedge fund managers to destroy a company through dirty tricks; and the story of a whistleblower who gets in the way of the largest banks in America, only to find herself in the crosshairs. On the other side of the Divide, Taibbi takes us to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights.

Through astonishing—and enraging—accounts of the high-stakes capers of the wealthy and nightmare stories of regular people caught in the Divide’s punishing logic, Taibbi lays bare one of the greatest challenges we face in contemporary American life: surviving a system that devours the lives of the poor, turns a blind eye to the destructive crimes of the wealthy, and implicates us all.

©2014 Matt Taibbi (P)2014 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Ambitious . . . deeply reported, highly compelling . . . impossible to put down.”—The New York Times Book Review

“These are the stories that will keep you up at night. . . . The Divide is not just a report from the new America; it is advocacy journalism at its finest.”—Los Angeles Times

“[Matt] Taibbi is a relentless investigative reporter. He takes readers inside not only investment banks, hedge funds and the blood sport of short-sellers, but into the lives of the needy, minorities, street drifters and illegal immigrants, to juxtapose justice for the poor and the powerful. . . . The Divide is an important book. Its documentation is powerful and shocking.”—The Washington Post

A Tale of Two Americas

What did you love best about The Divide?

I don't think love is the right word to use. I really appreciate that Matt Taibbi wrote this book to help illuminate the unequal application of the law in this country. Also, it helped me to have a greater understanding of the time leading up to the economic meltdown in 2008.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

There were several moments - every time Mr Taibbi wrote about the African American men who were unjustly accused of a crime. I guess the one that stands out the most is when the men, riding in a Range Rover owned by one of them, were dragged out the vehicle by police while stopped at a red light. They had done nothing wrong yet it cost them both a year of their lives to get it all straightened out.

The police practice of just grabbing people off the street, throwing them in the back of a van and then taking them to jail was (is) motivated simply by having a quota to fill. It's like they think "oh, we'll just grab anyone we feel like and then sort it out later".

Any additional comments?

I highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about the inequality in this country - regardless of their political leanings, The fact that CEO's, Hedge Fund Managers and the like can commit massive fraud and not go to jail, is just wrong! The whole attitude of "too big to jail" is a ridiculous notion. Sadly, since none of these fraudsters were prosecuted and jailed, there was no incentive for the banks and wall street to make any changes. I see another (perhaps even larger) crash coming in the near future. I predict it will happen just before the 2016 elections.

Great contrast of two different worlds!

Where does The Divide rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Its in the top 10.

Have you listened to any of Ray Porter’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I first picked this book because Ray Porter was narrating.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Listening to the corporate crimes made me very angry.

Compare and Contrast

Taibbi does a masterful job of contrasting the disheartening disparity between "thems that got and thems that ain't." It should come as no surprise, but it is a call to action. He offers some hope in the final chapter that there may be efforts to balance the field - small pockets of people in power who are starting to make a change.
Anyone familiar with his writing style will be glad to see that it lives in this book as well. The material can be dense at times yet it remains digestible because of Taibbi's skill at distillation.
Finally, the narrator is a perfect selection. He understands Taibbi's use of sarcasm, analogy and incredulity and brings it out perfectly in his reading. I don't think the author could have done better.

Horrifying

If you can read this book straight through in a few settings, without having to pause periodically and address the fact that you’re nauseated and disgusted, then you have a stronger fortitude than I do. It is absolutely amazing to me that we continue to allow white-collar crime to rob us blind, smiling at us the entire time. It is equally disgusting that we hold poor people, immigrants, and people of color to draconian enforcement of the law, all while white America is held to no standard at all.

Wonderful

This is a heart breaking book, but it's worth the price for such an eye-opening experience.

Excellent Narrative of Inequality in the U.S.

I've followed Matt Taibbi for years on Democracy Now so I bought this book to support him as a journalist I trust. I must say... this book FAR exceeded my expectations! The book is written beautifully, providing facts from court cases to real life struggles from those affected by the criminal justice system... and those who have been, and will continue to be forgiven by it. I've always been aware of THE DIVIDE, but I now have concrete evidence to support what I already knew. The narrator did a great job of keeping the book interesting. I've already recommended this book to everyone I know, so now I'm recommending it to you! :-)

"justice, just us" Richard Pryor

. Tiabbi exposes the our duel justice as the scales lighten up on powerful there's perverse attempt to compensate by going after the powerless. The stories of poor marginalized ar riveting and maddening.

Must listen!

Outstanding and required if you want to understand the forces at play in the USA

Inequality in justice laid bare in the US

Mouth dropping injustice and inequality laid bare between the have's and have not's. Clear explanation of how similar offenses get prosecuted when you're poor, but condoned when done massive scales by large corporations. By the end it gets a little sickening.

Must Read!

If you care about equality in the eyes of the law the first thing you need to know is what the current state of things are. This book provides a fantastically well written assessment of the state of what we call justice, and it’s a sorry state for sure. Taibbi is a great great investigative journalist and a fantastic writer. This book is a must read, or listen.