In his recent book Evicted, Mathew Desmond follows the detailed stories of poor Milwaukee residents as they struggle with the threat of eviction, are evicted, and then subjected to homelessness and struggle to find new housing. The strength of Desmond’s writing is that he is scrupulously non-judgmental in his portrayal of both evicted tenants and their landlords. This gives us a window into how choices that many of us would instinctively consider cruel or outrageous make sense to those involved.