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Title details for The Divide by Matt Taibbi - Available

The Divide

American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

by Matt Taibbi
Ray Porter
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS
A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis
 
Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery:
 
Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles.
Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail.
 
In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side.
 
In The Divide, Matt Taibbi takes readers on a galvanizing journey through both sides of our new system of justice—the fun-house-mirror worlds of the untouchably wealthy and the criminalized poor. He uncovers the startling looting that preceded the financial collapse; a wild conspiracy of billionaire hedge fund managers to destroy a company through dirty tricks; and the story of a whistleblower who gets in the way of the largest banks in America, only to find herself in the crosshairs. On the other side of the Divide, Taibbi takes us to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights.
 
Through astonishing—and enraging—accounts of the high-stakes capers of the wealthy and nightmare stories of regular people caught in the Divide’s punishing logic, Taibbi lays bare one of the greatest challenges we face in contemporary American life: surviving a system that devours the lives of the poor, turns a blind eye to the destructive crimes of the wealthy, and implicates us all.
Praise for The Divide
 
“Ambitious . . . deeply reported, highly compelling . . . impossible to put down.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“These are the stories that will keep you up at night. . . . The Divide is not just a report from the new America; it is advocacy journalism at its finest.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“Taibbi is a relentless investigative reporter. He takes readers inside not only investment banks, hedge funds and the blood sport of short-sellers, but into the lives of the needy, minorities, street drifters and illegal immigrants. . . . The Divide is an important book. Its documentation is powerful and shocking.”—The Washington Post
 
“Captivating . . . The Divide enshrines its author’s position as one of the most important voices in contemporary American journalism.”—The Independent (UK)
 
“Taibbi [is] perhaps the greatest reporter on Wall Street’s crimes in the modern era.”—Salon

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    April 8, 2014

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780804128063
      • File size: 403799 KB
      • Duration: 14:01:14

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Scott Brick sharply defines the characters in Nicholas Evans's thoughtful look at the gulf that divides people from one another. After 23 years of marriage Ben Cooper is bored and restless. His wife, Sarah, rages with righteous indignation when Ben decides to leave. When the Coopers learn of their daughter's death, questions and recriminations open old wounds and gouge tragic new ones. Brick's performance has just the right self-assuredness for characters who stubbornly rationalize behaviors that cause others pain. His directness nicely fits this sprawling story, while his voice, sometimes brusque, sometimes tender, makes listeners privy to each person's secrets. Evans spins a good story, and Brick makes it perfect listening for a cold winter's night. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      This muckraking audiobook is full of sound and fury concerning the wealthy people who control the economy and the justice system, and the poorer citizens who make up the majority of those in jail. These groups form the divide in American society, according to journalist Taibbi, and they're getting farther apart by the minute. Narrator Ray Porter has the kind of deep, authoritative voice that can be a cliché in narrators who are discussing current social issues. But Porter breaks out of the mold and injects his personality into the work. He sounds like he's speaking to listeners individually and reads with pauses and emphasis that personalize the information. There are times when he runs out of breath or ends sentences awkwardly, but his efforts do make the book more relevant and interesting. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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