“Brilliantly researched and tightly argued, Our Lot reveals the untold story of the housing crisis through the eyes of the victims and villains that created it.”—Christopher Hayes, Washington, D.C. editor for The Nation“A trenchant chronicle of how ‘all that had been sacred about home lending’ was upended.”—The New York Times“Greenspan’s failure, which points to a lack of enforcement rather than power, is but one of the many revealing anecdotes that Katz relates in Our Lot, her densely documented and cleanly written account of the nation’s real estate collapse.”—The Boston Globe“Our Lot is a sobering account of the origins of our current mortgage crisis. Katz methodically, and with great precision, traces the roots of homeownership in American society. Leaving few stones unturned, Our Lot provides an incisive analysis of the rational and speculative decisions that have made America so susceptible to the twists and turns of the housing industry. The book is a timely historical account, but its lessons are clear and penetrating for the contemporary era.”—Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day“Our Lot is a page-turning tale of how a real estate boom was conjured on a foundation of false hopes and Wall Street alchemy. Alyssa Katz digs deeply into the devastation that reckless lending and cynical speculation visited upon American places like Cleveland, Ohio, and Lee County, Florida. Her book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the roots of our nation’s housing crisis.”—Michael Hudson, coauthor of Merchants of Misery“Katz brings something fresh to the debate in Our Lot—a down-in-the-trenches history of how the housing binge bubbled up from decades of social engineering by a government bent on encouraging home ownership.”—Bloomberg News“The book’s main strength lies in Katz’s thoroughness and human touch. Her interviews with predators and victims are as engaging as they are troubling.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer“Our Lot performs an invaluable journalistic service by giving us a bottom-up approach to the decade’s housing madness.”—Austin American-Statesman“A cavalcade of books purporting to explain the roots of the housing crisis have emerged over the past few months, but Alyssa Katz’s Our Lot stands out as the best one yet . . . Buy it, read it, send it to your Congressman.”—Dailyfinance.com“[Our Lot] breaks the mold of surface-skimming blame-gaming . . . Engrossingly vivid, humanizing and lyrical.”—Inman News“To read Our Lot is to relive, in painful, anecdotal detail, the real estate bust that brought our economy low. Through Alyssa Katz . . . we remeet the exploited homeowners and the naïve investors, and we cringe again at the blundering politicians and opportunistic lenders.”—Salon“There are many real estate stories yet to be told—while reading Our Lot, I kept wondering why I had not read these stories already, why there has not been more feature reporting on the people caught in the crisis. We get foreclosure and house price figures every month, but not enough about the stories behind the numbers . . . Katz’s important book introduces us to people still reeling financially.”—Good magazine“With the real estate crisis blighting thousands of neighborhoods and millions of lives, Alyssa Katz’s lucid, coolly outraged new book is an absolutely essential guide to how it all happened. Katz had the prescience to see what was coming, and her deeply researched, historically grounded book can help us all avoid similar catastrophes in the future.”—Michelle Goldberg, author of The Means of Reproduction“Richly detailed analysis of the recent (and ignominious) history of the American real estate market . . . Katz, a journalism professor at New York University, draws on an impressive number of interviews and thorough secondary research to illuminate the disastrous consequences of pushing underqualified buyers into ownership . . . Katz writes with authority and empathy. The many people the author interviews, from the single mother in Cleveland who lost her house just two years after buying it to the family living near Sacramento whose new home is already falling apart, become the heroes, victims and sometimes culprits in this gripping account of collective irresponsibility.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Alyssa Katz teaches journalism at New York University and works as an editorial consultant with the Pratt Center for Community Development. Formerly the editor of City Limits, a magazine about New York City and its neighborhoods, she currently writes for Mother Jones, New York, The Big Money, and other publications.
Visit our UK site
