An important book. Noelle Stout documents the scamming and nefarious actions undertaken by the banks and Wall Street, and how the government refused to help its citizens, saving Wall Street instead. A gripping read.--Dale Maharidge, Professor of Journalism, Columbia University, and author of Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression 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