Public Housing

Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to 23 towers and a population of 20,000 - all of it packed onto just 70 acres a few blocks from Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast. Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource - it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed.

In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.

Dorothy A. Brown became a tax lawyer to get away from race. As a young black girl growing up in the South Bronx, she’d seen how racism limited the lives of her family and neighbors. Her law school classes offered a refreshing contrast: Tax law was about numbers, and the only color that mattered was green. But when Brown sat down to prepare tax returns for her parents, she found something strange: James and Dottie Brown, a plumber and a nurse, seemed to be paying an unusually high percentage of their income in taxes. When Brown became a law professor, she set out to understand why.

Who really owns your hospital, your job, your home—or even your 911 call center? How Private Equity Will Break America is a hard-hitting investigation into the shadow financial empire quietly reshaping the American economy. From bankrupt retail giants to crumbling nursing homes, the story is the same: private equity firms use borrowed money to buy companies, strip their assets, cut essential services, and extract profits—leaving workers, communities, and taxpayers to deal with the fallout. In gripping, evidence-driven prose, this book exposes how private equity infiltrates nearly every ...

Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners.

Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-have resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Listeners will find discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment; explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism; and a comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis.

Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all.

Four years is a long time to be away from home, and Jake was anticipating a variety of changes after arriving back post college. With his stepmother and two stepsisters holding down the fort while his father works overseas, he’s coming back to his family eager to reconnect. Though nothing in life is ever quite that simple. With his older stepsister, Jaimie, still acting as bratty and frustrating as ever, and Kate, his younger stepsister, unusually quiet and clingy, he finds himself walking an odd balance. That’s not even mentioning his stepmother, Rebecca, who seems intent on ...

In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. "The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions," say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion, and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a "curiously complicit" alliance.

There is no better guide than Paul Krugman to basic economics, the ideas that animate much of our public policy. Likewise, there is no stronger foe of zombie economics, the misunderstandings that just won’t die. In Arguing with Zombies, Krugman tackles many of these misunderstandings, taking stock of where the United States has come from and where it’s headed in a series of concise, digestible chapters. Drawn mainly from his popular New York Times column, they cover a wide range of issues, organized thematically and framed in the context of a wider debate.

Sean Costello survived his first taste of power, but the game has just begun. He's inherited his father's casino, his enemies, and a legacy far darker than he ever imagined. Now, with the Vegas underworld circling and a mountain of debt hanging over his head, Sean must decide what kind of kingpin he's going to be. But as he's drawn deeper into a web of deceit, betrayal, and illicit desire, one wrong move could cost him everything.

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Inherit money. Inherit power. Inherit everything from the father he never knew. Sean Costello’s life just went from zero to a hundred million in the blink of an eye. But in Las Vegas, every fortune has a price. A stunning casino, a penthouse overflowing with secrets, and a harem of women who are as dangerous as they are desirable. Between the matriarch of the house, a loyal but suspicious childhood friend, and a dangerously tempting maid, Sean quickly discovers how easily pleasure and danger can intertwine. Note: This book contains mature themes.

Hi there! Here are Books 6 through 10 of my newest series: “Horny Husbands, Humiliated Housewives,” all neatly bundled for your reading pleasure! In my experience, there are multitudes of husbands out there who, on the one hand, love their wives dearly—and in every way. Sadly, when it comes down to sex-stuff, these wives often let modesty, innocence, or conservative morals get in the way of giving their husband some of what they truly want—even if it’s naughty, kinky, or just plain dirty. Hey, guys like ‘dirty’—it’s how they roll. If only their wives could let them take ...

In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

Armed with clear and powerful evidence, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi reveal in House of Debt how the Great Recession and Great Depression, as well as the current economic malaise in Europe, were caused by a large run-up in household debt followed by a significantly large drop in household spending. Though the banking crisis captured the public's attention, Mian and Sufi argue strongly with actual data that current policy is too heavily biased toward protecting banks and creditors.

How did the Bushes, America's most powerful political family, become gradually seduced by and entangled with their Saudi counterparts?

A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world.

Back home at last, Jake has discovered the ups and downs to his not so normal family life. When a pretend boyfriend scheme intended to help his younger stepsister Kate gain confidence ends up going completely off the rails, he gets to know her better than he ever would have expected. It’s all happening right under the nose of his stepmother, Rebecca. Unfortunately, she isn’t the only person Jake and Kate have to look out for. When Jaimie, Jake’s older stepsister, begins to grow suspicious of how much time he and Kate are spending together, the situation begins to fray at the edges. ...

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?