Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass

This work is an account of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does, written by a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England. Its insight is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values, one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for victims. It draws upon eye-opening, true-life vignettes that are by turns hilariously funny, chillingly horrifying, and all too revealing - sometimes all at once.