About the Author

Gary Rivlin is the author of Fire on the Prairie, Drive By (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and The Plot to Get Bill Gates. A two-time Gerald Loeb Award winner, he has been a reporter for the New York Times, Chicago Reader, and other publications, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Wired, and elsewhere.

Reviews

"An exhaustive expose."----Washington Post
"Broke USA will leave you mad as hell. Thanks, Gary Rivlin, for introducing us to folks like Bill Brennan, who early on saw it coming: the predatory lending that has destroyed communities. If only we had listened."----Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and Never a City So Real
"[An] incisive, important new expose, Broke, USA...is enraging, but Rivlin's work also is scrupulously fair.... [W]hat makes Broke, USA so readable is Rivlin's skill at telling a complex story through engaging characters."----Cleveland Plain Dealer
"[A] fascinating book."----Fortune
"[A] scathing, important book, Broke, USA... includes one shocking anecdote after another."----Joe Nocera, the New York Times
"[Rivlin] offers a superb expose of the 'poverty business'... A timely, important, and deeply disturbing look at the cycle of dept in the nation's most vulnerable."----Publishers Weekly
"A fascinating and very important work of investigation and explanation, which I hope gets the wide attention it deserves.... This is a book with the potential to stimulate outrage--and political reform."----James Fallows, the Atlantic author of Breaking the News
"Broke, USA is vital reading for those seeking to deepen their understanding of the economic crash of the past few years."----Associated Press
"Gary Rivlin rivets readers."----Fast Company
"Gary Rivlin's Broke, USA is a necessary companion..."----Newsweek
"In Broke, USA, Rivlin lays out this depressing story in rich detail.... [H]is riveting look at the calamitous effects on America demands attention."----Charlotte News & Observer
"Mr. Rivlin brings to his subject a genuine gift for storytelling."----Wall Street Journal
"Rivlin strives to portray the people behind Poverty Inc. in a fair light...but his sympathy and the reader's steadily evaporate with his well-chosen tales of the industry's coercive tactics and it's leaders' astonishing wealth....Rivlin is the consummate tour guide, quick with a memorable anecdote or telling statistic."----New York Times Book Review
"This is a powerful analysis, detailing how the financial sector has come to its current state of crisis and including personal stories of some among the millions of working Americans who have been exploited along the way."----Booklist (starred review)
"This thorough and thoughtful piece of reporting has much to teach us about the challenges the U.S. faces today, especially when it comes to improving financial literacy. It should be required reading for legislators and lenders across the land."----Bloomberg News
"To understand American finance, you need to understand Ace Cash Express as much as you need to understand Goldman Sachs. Which is why Gary Rivlin's "Broke, USA" is a necessary companion."----Ezra Klein, Washington Post
"With revealing stories, Gary Rivlin spotlights the systematic, widespread economic abuse of the poor by supposedly respectable corporations whose predatory conduct breeds misery and undoes many efforts by taxpayers to alleviate poverty."----David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Free Lunch and Perfectly Legal