Dispossessed – How Predatory Bureaucracy Foreclosed on the American Middle Class: California Series in Public Anthropology

"Public anthropology at its finest. Stout shows how in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, those losing their homes--Mexican immigrants, African Americans who had saved for their first house, and middle-class folks moving up--struggled to make sense of what was happening to them as their American dream turned into a Kafkaesque nightmare."--Hugh Gusterson, Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, George Washington University

"A brilliant work that all Americans urgently need to read. Despite the devastating story the book tells, we can feel hopeful: once these forces of destruction and the means of resisting them are understood through Stout's nuanced and insightful ethnography, perhaps they will never again be repeated."--Emily Martin, author of The Meaning of Money in China and the United States

"This should become an instant classic: as a teaching text, a powerful and wholly current read, and a signal of anthropological contribution to thinking about debt and obligation."--Don Brenneis, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Dispossessed offers a much-needed and highly readable account of how the foreclosure crisis integral to the 2008 recession played out in everyday life."--Jessica Cattelino, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles