Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond wins Pulitzer for ‘Evicted’
Just weeks after receiving the National Book Critics Circle Award, Harvard Professor Matthew Desmond has won the Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for his highly praised “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” it was announced Monday. The citation called the book “a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty.” “Evicted,” which examined how the epidemic of evictions after the 2008 economic crash was a cause of widespread poverty rather than its consequence, followed eight displaced families while himself living in a trailer park and a rooming house for more than a year. His work brought increased attention to the plight of those upended by the burst of the housing bubble, while filling in enormous gaps in eviction data. Among the book’s important points: mothers and children are the people most affected by evictions, because landlords consider...