Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder

When do impossible choices start to tear people—a society—apart? It’s already happening. The cause of the unmanageable household math that’s keeping people up at night is no secret. The top 1 percent now makes eighty-one times what those in the bottom half do, when you compare average earnings. For American adults on the lower half of the income ladder—some 117 million of them—earnings haven’t changed since the 1970s. This is not a wage gap—it’s a chasm. And the cost of that growing divide is paid by everyone.