Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It

Don Pecks Pinched, a fascinating and harrowing exploration of our dramatic economic climate, observes how the recession has changed the places we live, the work we do, and even who we are – and details the transformations that are yet to come. 

This was not an ordinary recession, and ordinary responses will not fully end it. The crash has shifted the course of the economy. In its aftermath, the middle class is shrinking faster, wealth is becoming more concentrated, twenty-somethings are sinking, and working-class families and communities are changing in unsavory ways.

We sit today between two eras, buffeted, anxious, and uncertain of the future.  Through vivid reporting and lucid argument, Peck helps us make sense of how our society has changed, and why so many people are still struggling. 

The country has endured periods like this one before, and has emerged all the stronger from them; adaptation and reinvention have been perhaps the nations best and most enduring traits. The time is ripe for another such reinvention.