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London's Overthrow - China Miéville This is the first time I've read non-fiction from China Miéville. He does an amazing job of portraying the side of London that doesn't get into print often. As he writes: We’re approaching Victorian levels of inequality, and London’s more unequal than anywhere else in the country. Here, the richest 10 percent hold two thirds of all wealth, the poorest half, one 20th. A fifth of working residents in the London boroughs of Brent, Newham, Waltham Forest, Barking and Dagenham earn less than a living wage. Unemployment in the city is above 400,000, and rising. Almost a quarter of young Londoners are out of work. A wrenching 40 percent of London children live in poverty. Talk about a chasm between economic classes.I found this much more readable than George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier which was authored on the same topic in 1936. George Orwell is by no means a hack writer, but I found his diatribe on economic problems and advocacy of socialism to be more like a dry lecture delivered by a college professor by comparison.There are lots of striking passages here, like: The lion looks out from its apocalypse at the scrag-end of 2011. London, buffeted by economic catastrophe, vastly reconfigured by a sporting jamboree of militarised corporate banality, jostling with social unrest, still reeling from riots. Apocalypse is less a cliché than a truism. This place is pre-something. I'm behind the author 100% when he blames part of the economic problems on big businesses. While some people struggle to put food on the table, the CEO of a company can afford to spend $5,000 on a shower curtain as they rake in profits by getting astronomical sums for finished products compared to the cost of manufacturing them.Thanks to whoever found this online. It's very well written and thought provoking. Check it out.