The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It by Timothy Noah; Bloomsbury Press; 2012; 200 pages.

“For the past three decades, America has steadily become a nation of haves and have-nots.  Our incomes are, increasingly, drastically unequal: The top 1 percent of Americans collects some 21 percent of the nation’s income – more than double their share in 1979. … It’s harder to rise from poverty in the United States than in almost any comparably developed country.  The growing chasm between rich and poor may be the most important change in this country during our lifetime – a sharp, fundamental shift in the character of American society, and not all for the better.” Barbara Ehrenreich says, “This is the book the 99 percent has been waiting for. Crisply lucid and brilliantly argued, it manages to entertain at the same time that it explains.  Best of all, Noah offers some strikingly sensible steps to undo the economic polarization that is tearing America apart.”