Summer Reading List for students interested in poverty law

A number of 1Ls have asked me for a summer reading list so I decided to put one on the blog. Feel free to add to the list in the comments. These are just the books I think would make for good summer reading. There are of course other good recent books, but they might be better for academics or academic study rather than summer reading (I am thinking of Karen Tani’s States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights, and American Governance, 1935-1972 (2016) and Anne Fleming’s City of Debtors: A Century of Fringe Finance (2018), but maybe I am wrong, maybe those could be good for the 1L summer as well). My list, probably in order, is below:

1. Jason DeParle, American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare (2005) [a great way for students to both learn about welfare reform and about the lives of the poor].
2. Kathryn Edin & H. Luke Shaeffer, $2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America (2016) [interesting in its own right, but included here because its overview chapter at the beginning of the book is one of the best overviews of the history of welfare programs out there].
3. Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016) [winner of last year’s Pulitzer Prize, included third because it is likely assigned in many upper level poverty classes whereas the first two might not be assigned but are excellent]. My two reviews of this book are here: Yale Law Journal Forum & Fordham Urban Law Journal.
4. James Forman, Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (2017) [winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize].
5. Katherine Boo, Beyond the Beautiful Forevers (2014) [frankly, this is a placeholder; I think students should read one book at least about international poverty for perspective and this a good book to go with, but there are others for different parts of the world].
6. Peter Edelman, So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America (2013) [a great march through all the ways the government fights against poverty and the history of that fight since President Johnson; a bit academic for summer reading but short enough to be accessible].

[Of course, if you want to break free from poverty books, I am a huge fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in a Time of Cholera, John Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River (for those who have already read Garp), and the novels of Martin Cruz Smith, starting with Gorky Park.]