If you want a good understanding of how the issues that cause poverty are intertwined, you should read this book about the eviction crisis in Milwaukee. Desmond has written a brilliant portrait of Americans living in poverty. He gave me a better sense of what it is like to be poor in this country than anything else I have read.- Bill Gates

Arleen spends nearly all her money on rent but is kicked out with her kids in Milwaukee's coldest winter for years.

Doreen's home is so filthy her family call it 'the rat hole'. Lamar, a wheelchair-bound ex-soldier, tries to work his way out of debt for his boys. Scott, a nurse turned addict, lives in a gutted-out trailer.

This is their world. And this is the twenty-first century- where fewer and fewer people can afford a simple roof over their head. From abandoned slums to shelters, eviction courts to ghettoes, Matthew Desmond spent years living with and recording the stories of those struggling to survive - yet who won't give up.

A work of love, care and humanity, Evicted reminds us why, without a home, nothing else is possible.

One for Bill Gate's Top Five Reads of 2017