If you're looking for some summer reading let me make two suggestions if you are interested in what's happening on the streets of America.
The first book is
Dreamland by Sam Quinones.
Dreamland is the best book out there about
America's opioid addiction epidemic, a national health crisis that has become our generation's AIDS.
Seriously, if you're a church and you're not tracking with the opioid epidemic you're massively out of touch with what's happening in your city.
The second book is
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond.
This is the best book about poverty in America that I've ever read. Many people have pointed to
Hillbilly Elegy as the best recent book about Rust Belt America, but I think
Evicted is way, way the better read.
Evicted is focused on both whites and blacks and gets you more into the nuts and bolts of how the system affects poor people, their housing especially.
If your church is interested in poverty, housing and homelessness then you need to read
Evicted.
