Motivated by a haunting graffito in the desert, journalist Dale Maharidge explores the realities of being poor in America in the coming decade, as pandemic, economic crisis and social revolution up-end the country.

For two decades, Dale Maharidge has been one of America's leading chroniclers of poverty. Alongside photographer Michael Williamson, his book And Their Children After Them won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1990, revisiting the places and people of depression-era America, depicted in Walker Evans's and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Also with Williamson, Maharidge wrote Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, which Bruce Springsteen has credited as an influence for songs such as "Youngstown" and "The New Timer".