2008-06-16 A brilliant follow up to the original classic

Very few sociologists have lived to follow an urban group for 50 years and trace the evolution of a community through the second half of the twentieth century, a period of convulsive change. What happened in this instance amounted to complete replacement of one group by another; something archaeologists usually have to infer from changes in pottery style but here studied in the lives of those affected by it. One reviewer refers in scathing terms to Theodore Dalrymple, the brilliant essayist and observer of the underclass, who demonstrates time and again how treating people as individual agents reveals far more about them statistical studies ever can (see his essay- 'How to read a society' in the wonderful collection 'Our culture what's left of it'). Anyone who disparages Dalrymple is no doubt part of the forces of cultural destruction that afflict modern Britain.
I can only recommend reading this book without being put off by the cries of anguish emanating from the politically correct Marxist establishment that dominates present day sociology in Britain.