Concerned about the distance of academics from the problems they study, Bob Holtman has been living and working on Europe's largest public housing estate, Easterhouse in Glasgow, for many years. In his powerful new book, Holman asks seven people who experience poverty every day to describe the reality of their lives. These moving and articulate accounts of life at the bottom of the social scale deserve to be heard by the policy-makers, social workers, churches, and voluntary groups who presume to know what is best for the poor.