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To write Evicted, Desmond moved into a trailer park on the south side of Milwaukee and then into a rooming house in a Black inner-city neighbourhood, and stayed for over a year. He followed eight families and their landlords through eviction after eviction, shadowed a moving crew clearing households in a single day, and then did something most people in his position do not: he went and built a national data set, founding the Eviction Lab at Princeton to count how often this actually happens in America. Evicted (2016) won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Carnegie Medal, and Barbara Ehrenreich wrote that it set a new standard for reporting on poverty. Poverty, by America (2023) is a different kind of book — short, angry, and arguing that American poverty persists because the secure, the insured and the housed benefit from it. That combination is the thread running through this list: every writer below went and lived inside the thing they were writing about, stayed long enough to be forgotten about, and then refused to stop at anecdote. Each entry says how long they stayed and what they counted.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Immersive reporting · Pulitzer Prize 2017 · The Eviction Lab · Updated September 2026
Quick answer
All ten share Desmond's method in some form — move in, stay, then put numbers on it — and each entry below is scored on both halves. Barbara Ehrenreich, Katherine Boo, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and Ted Conover are the great immersions, some running to a decade. George Orwell did it first. Jason DeParle, Alex Kotlowitz, Sarah Smarsh and Jennifer Senior take the same approach elsewhere. And Esther Duflo argues the whole method proves nothing.
Where to start if you loved Matthew Desmond
If you want the closest match, read Barbara Ehrenreich.
Nickel and Dimed. Three months of real shifts, and the arithmetic that fails.
If you want the longest immersion, read Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
Random Family. Eleven years in the Bronx, and not one statistic.
If you want the one who did it first, read George Orwell.
The Road to Wigan Pier. Down a pit, and then the household budgets in a table.
If you want both halves at once, read Jason DeParle.
American Dream. The same city, the kitchen table and the federal caseload together.
If you want the argument against the method, read Esther Duflo.
Poor Economics. What living somewhere cannot tell you, and a control group can.
If you want more non-fiction of this kind
My shelf of the best non-fiction has the rest.
10 authors like Matthew Desmond
Frequently asked questions about authors like Matthew Desmond
Who should I read if I love Matthew Desmond?
Barbara Ehrenreich is the closest — she took the jobs and did the arithmetic, and she reviewed Evicted herself. Katherine Boo spent over three years in a Mumbai settlement with three thousand public records behind it, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc gave eleven years to one Bronx family, and Ted Conover worked a year as a Sing Sing guard. George Orwell invented the combination in the 1930s. Alex Kotlowitz, Jason DeParle, Sarah Smarsh and Jennifer Senior apply it to public housing, welfare reform, rural Kansas and grief. Esther Duflo argues the whole method proves nothing.
What do these ten writers actually have in common?
Two things, and the second is what narrows the list. All of them went and lived inside their subject and stayed long enough to stop being a visitor — from three months to eleven years. And almost all of them then went and counted something: budgets, court records, caseload data, maintenance logs. Books that only do the first half tend to become moving anecdotes that change nothing; books that only do the second tend not to be read. Desmond does both, and the Eviction Lab is the second half made permanent.
Should I read Evicted or Poverty, by America first?
Evicted (2016), without question. It is the ethnography: eight families, two Milwaukee neighbourhoods, landlords given as much attention as tenants, and no easy heroes or villains. Poverty, by America (2023) is a short, furious argument rather than a reported book, and several reviewers noted it reads as though written by a different author — it is a manifesto for what Desmond calls poverty abolitionism. It lands far harder if you have already met the families.
Is there a criticism of this kind of reporting?
Yes, and it is worth taking seriously. The reporter chooses who to follow and what to include, is present in situations they change simply by being there, and goes home at the end. Immersion also cannot establish cause: knowing eight families in Milwaukee tells you what eviction does, not what would prevent it. That is Esther Duflo's objection and it is a strong one. The best of these writers answer it by pairing the immersion with data, which is exactly why Desmond built the Eviction Lab.
What is the Eviction Lab?
A research project Desmond founded at Princeton that assembled the first national database of evictions in the United States, county by county, from court records — because before it, nobody could say how often Americans were evicted. It publishes the data openly. It is the clearest example of the second half of the method on this page: the book bears witness to eight families, and the Lab establishes that what happened to them happens millions of times.
Which of these is the hardest to read?
Random Family, for most people, because LeBlanc refuses all interpretation — there is no narrator telling you what a scene means, no statistic to hold on to, and eleven years of accumulating consequence. There Are No Children Here is close behind, since its subjects are seven and ten. Behind the Beautiful Forevers is the most beautifully written and includes a suicide and a death in custody. None of them is gratuitous; all of them are hard.
Where should I start if I only read one?
Evicted, then Nickel and Dimed, then Duflo — in that order. The first shows you the method at full strength, the second shows it done with the reporter's own body on the line, and the third tells you what neither of them can establish. If you only have an evening rather than a month, read Jennifer Senior's Pulitzer-winning Atlantic piece, which does the whole thing in one sitting.
What is Desmond working on now?
Nothing new has been announced as of September 2026. He is a professor of sociology at Princeton, principal investigator of the Eviction Lab, and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, where his long pieces appear between books. He holds a MacArthur Fellowship and won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, and his four books to date are On the Fireline, Racial Domination, Racial Progress, Evicted and Poverty, by America.
Footnotes
- Poverty, by America — Penguin Random House, with the author biography and awards
- Matthew Desmond's Poverty, By America shows who benefits by keeping some poor — NPR, March 2023
- Evicted — Publishers Weekly review, with the fieldwork described
- Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond urges individuals to commit to abolishing poverty — Princeton University
- Evicted — jacket praise, including Barbara Ehrenreich in the New York Times Book Review
List last reviewed 23 September 2026.
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“Poverty and profit in the American city.”
— Matthew Desmond, Evicted, 2016.
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