Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are

Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are

Chalabi, Mona

Hardcover

EconomicsGeneral Graphic NovelsPoverty & Social Work

Publisher Price: $30.00

PREORDER - Expected ship date November 10, 2026

ISBN10: 0593243676
ISBN13: 9780593243671
Publisher: Random House
Published: Nov 10 2026
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.25
Language: English
A visually striking exploration of money--and the lack of it--in America told through the lives of ten individuals, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist and artist

Astonishing . . . Chalabi's taboo-busting transparency about peoples' financial lives is revolutionary enough. But it's the pellucid clarity of her data visualizations that will really change how you understand capitalism.--Alison Bechdel, bestselling author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Anna has a comfortable life in a mansion in Maine thanks to her husband (well, his parents, really) until he suddenly asks for a divorce. In Arizona, Hunter is a U.S. veteran, feeling ashamed about claiming disability benefits. Then there's Levi, who is trying to pay off his debts from a gambling addiction, one social media video at a time. And Christian, stifled by his job at an Amazon warehouse before a union-organizing effort offers a way out for his comrades and his young kids. Ten people, ten different incomes, all of them afraid for their futures.

For five years, data journalist Mona Chalabi followed them all, documenting how wealth shaped their feelings, their choices, their identities, and their insecurities. She researched the data behind their taxes, groceries, inheritances, and so much more to understand the systems that keep people stuck. But then, she too found herself facing the same fears, when her mother's sudden illness and subsequent medical bills threatened her own financial safety and made the questions she had been writing about all too real. How much money is enough? To live a good life? To protect the people you love in an emergency?

Interweaving her own story with those of her interviewees and illustrated throughout with the data visualizations for which Chalabi is renowned, Ten Lives asks how much wealth it takes to be safe in the United States. It explores how difficult it is for us to be honest and open about what we have and argues that until we get better at it, we will never be able to address the underlying problems that drive inequality and insecurity for us all.

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