Life at the Bottom

Theodore Dalrymple. Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001.

Theodore Dalrymple is an eloquent writer with an important message. He is a physician who has spent much of his career ministering to Great Britain's permanent underclass, an underclass created by progressive-liberal and left-wing ideologies. Dalrymple writes beautifully, so his essays would be a pleasure to read even without their fascinating if unhappy content. His descriptions of the harm that academia, the media, the school system, the state and Britain's left-wing intellectuals have perpetrated on Britain's underclass are likely to catch the reader's attention.

Mr. Dalrymple is a better writer than most liberal media journalists, and his insights are much more interesting, realistic and important. This book is evidence that progressive-liberalism lives on borrowed time. Despite the enormous resources that the British have thrown at progessive education, welfare, housing and universities, the only breakthrough insights about Britain's poor are coming from this lone physician.