Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Spring   Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Matthew Desmond (Crown Publishers) He may be a Harvard sociolo- gist, but he’s also an exceptional journalist. In what could prove to be among the most important books of 2016, Desmond shows how housing evictions disrupt the lives of the poorest Americans, who are paying up to 80 percent of their income to rent substandard accommodation in the nation’s worst neighbor- hoods. He compares the impact of eviction in the lives of black women and children to that of incarceration in the lives of young black men: “Poor black men are locked up; poor black women are locked out.” Before writing, Desmond spent a year living in a trailer park and an urban ghetto in Milwaukee, following tenants to court, homeless shelters, and funerals, and listening to landlords explain how they find it impossible to build new housing at affordable prices. “Decent affordable housing should be a basic right.” Desmond writes. “Without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.” But his stories show how other factors, such as family breakdown, mass incarceration, drug addiction, and unemployment all conspire to send people into a downward spiral that leaves them and their pos- sessions back on the sidewalk. Desmond makes some specific proposals, such as vouchers to make up for the shortfall in public housing–currently four times as many people qualify as can be accommodated and the wait is counted in years and even decades. At the same time, Evicted shows just how hard it will be to solve this silent crisis. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The tragic human stories told here demand a response. The Editors For the Glory: Eric Liddell’s Journey from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr Duncan Hamilton (Penguin Press) The defining chapter of Eric Liddell’s life is not the one immortalized by the classic film Chariots of Fire. In the film, the twenty-two-year-old Scottish champion refuses to run the 100 meters in the 1924 Paris Olympics because the race is scheduled on a Sunday, then goes on to win gold at 400 meters, beating his nearest competitor by a whopping seven yards. The film misses the more amazing story of the life that followed Liddell’s decision to renounce celebrity and a gold-studded athletic career to become a missionary in a remote Chinese village. The grinding poverty in Siaochang, where Liddell had spent his own early childhood as the son of missionaries, took a turn for the worse with the arrival of civil war and Japanese occupation; the danger would separate Liddell from his wife and daughters for the better part of their marriage. During World War II the Japanese imprisoned Liddell and 1,800 other foreign nationals in Weihsien, a camp that measured a mere 150 by 200 yards. (Another prisoner, Langdon Gilkey, recounts the exceptional communal life that emerged from this duress in his 1966 book Shan- tung Compound.) Here Liddell gave his last ounce to keep fellow prisoners’ hope alive, dying at age forty-three of an inoperable brain tumor. In Duncan Hamilton’s impressive new biography, Liddell seems larger than life at times, the biographer awed by the seemingly superhu- man goodness of his subject. But through eyes of faith, the irrepressible positivity, dedication, and compassion Liddell demonstrates even in dire situations gives glory to God, who gives such strength of character to mere mortals who are willing to die to self and allow him to work through them.