As journalist Timothy Noah writes, there is more income inequality in the United States than in Venezuela, Kenya or Yemen.

All my life I've heard Latin America described as a failed society (or collection of failed societies) because of its grotesque maldistribution of wealth. Peasants in rags beg for food outside the high walls of opulent villas, and so on. But according to the Central Intelligence Agency (whose patriotism I hesitate to question), income distribution in the United States is more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela….Income inequality is actually declining in Latin America even as it continues to increase in the United States. Economically speaking, the richest nation on earth is starting to resemble a banana republic.

Join Noah at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., this Friday, July 20, at 12 p.m. for a discussion of his new book, The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It. Noah will explain how the Great Divergence has come about, why it threatens American democracy—and what we can do to reverse it.

Books will be available for purchase and for author signing. (“Rise of the Stinking Rich” is my vote for the best-named chapter in his book.)

Be sure to RSVP for the event here.

Noah, now senior editor at The New Republic, wrote The Great Divergence based on his 2010 series on inequality in Slate magazine. The book dispels the myth of upward income mobility in the United States, charts the big role of trade in fueling income inequality and describes the success of corporate interests in setting policies that benefit the 1 percent.

You gotta come by to hear him.

RSVP to join Timothy Noah here.