Here is a searing account-probably the best yet published-of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does. Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England, has seemingly seen it all. Yet in listening to and observing his patients, he is continually astonished by the latest twist of depravity that exceeds even his own considerable experience. Dalrymple's key insight in Life at the Bottom 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. This culture persuades those at the bottom that they have no responsibility for their actions and are not the molders of their own lives. Drawn from the pages of the cutting-edge political and cultural quarterly City Journal, Dalrymple's book draws upon scores of eye-opening, true-life vignettes that are by turns hilariously funny, chillingly horrifying, and all too revealing-sometimes all at once. And Dalrymple writes in prose that transcends journalism and achieves the quality of literature.

In Admirable Evasions, Theodore Dalrymple explains why human self-understanding has not been bettered by the false promises of the different schools of psychological thought. Most psychological explanations of human behavior are not only ludicrously inadequate oversimplifications, argues Dalrymple, they are socially harmful in that they allow those who believe in them to evade personal responsibility for their actions and to put the blame on a multitude of scapegoats: on their childhood, their genes, their neurochemistry, even on evolutionary pressures. Dalrymple reveals how the fashionable schools of psychoanalysis, behaviorism, modern neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology all prevent the kind of honest self-examination that is necessary to the formation of human character. Instead, they promote self-obsession without self-examination, and the gross overuse of medicines that affect the mind. Admirable Evasions also considers metaphysical objections to the assumptions of psychology, and suggests that literature is a far more illuminating window into the human condition than psychology could ever hope to be.

Travelling to the hard-living Dylan Thomas's Boathouse in Laugharne, Wales, psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple considered along the way another foible - the folly of eminent people. Praised for their attainments in one area, high-achievers are more often than not prone to unexpected failings elsewhere. Enter a large cast of anti- and vivisectionists, surgeons, theologians, philosophers, admirals, judges, astrophysicists, Nazi-leaning homoeopaths, and writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, P.G. Wodehouse, and Conan Doyle. In his pithy and amusing style, Dalrymple casts a sobering light on an insuppressible trait of ours - the fallibility of the human mind.

This new collection of essays by the author of Life at the Bottom bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. It suggests comparison with the work of George Orwell. In these twenty-six pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx, from the breakdown of Islam to the legalization of drugs. Informed by years of medical practice in a wide variety of settings, his acquaintance with the outer limits of human experience allows him to discover the universal in the local and the particular, and makes him impatient with the humbug and obscurantism that have too long marred our social and political life. As in Life at the Bottom, his essays are incisive yet undogmatic, beautifully composed and devoid of disfiguring jargon. Our Culture, What's Left of It is a book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization.

In Spoilt Rotten, social commentator Theodore Dalrymple (Our Culture or What is Left of It, 2009) grinds his axe at our sentimentality-centric culture where feelings have become the yardstick of everything we do: safe driving, education, taking of responsibility (none), sentimentality (everywhere). In this forensic polemic of maudlin popular culture from X-factor to Super Nannies, Dalrymple wields his scalpel at all our modern sacred cows. Children will be speechless, for once, parents will hang their heads in shame!

Theodore Dalrymple's new book of essays follows on the extraordinary success of his earlier collections, Life at the Bottom and Our Culture, What's Left of It. No social critic today is more adept and incisive in exploring the state of our culture and the ideas that are changing our ways of life. In Not with a Bang But a Whimper, he takes the measure of our cultural decline, with special attention to Britain-its bureaucratic muddle, oppressive welfare mentality, and aimless youth-all pursued in the name of democracy and freedom. He shows how terrorism and the growing numbers of Muslim minorities have changed our public life. Also here are Mr. Dalrymple's trenchant observations on artists and ideologues, and on the questionable treatment of criminals and the mentally disturbed, his area of medical interest.

Western Europe is in a strangely neurotic condition of being smug and terrified at the same time. On the one hand, Europeans believe they have at last created an ideal social and political system in which man can live comfortably. In many ways, things have never been better on the old continent. On the other hand, there is growing anxiety that Europe is quickly falling behind in an aggressive, globalized world. Europe is at the forefront of nothing, its demographics are rapidly transforming in unsettling ways, and the ancient threat of barbarian invasion has resurfaced in a fresh manifestation. In The New Vichy Syndrome, Theodore Dalrymple traces this malaise back to the great conflicts of the last century and their devastating effects upon the European psyche. From issues of religion, class, colonialism, and nationalism, Europeans hold a "miserablist" view of their history, one that alternates between indifference and outright contempt of the past. Today's Europeans no longer believe in anything but personal economic security, an increased standard of living, shorter working hours, and long vacations in exotic locales. The result, Dalrymple asserts, is an unwillingness to preserve European achievements and the dismantling of western culture by Europeans themselves. As vapid hedonism and aggressive Islamism fill this cultural void, Europeans have no one else to blame for their plight.

The New England Journal of Medicine is one of the most important general medical journals in the world. Doctors rely on the conclusions it publishes, and most do not have the time to look beyond abstracts to examine methodology or question assumptions. Many of its pronouncements are conveyed by the media to a mass audience, which is likely to take them as authoritative. But is this trust entirely warranted? Theodore Dalrymple, a doctor retired from practice, turned a critical eye upon a full year of the Journal, alert to dubious premises and to what is left unsaid. In False Positive, he demonstrates that many of the papers it publishes reach conclusions that are not only flawed, but obviously flawed. He exposes errors of reasoning and conspicuous omissions apparently undetected by the editors. In some cases, there is reason to suspect actual corruption. When the Journal takes on social questions, its perspective is solidly politically correct. Practically no debate on social issues appears in the printed version, and highly debatable points of view go unchallenged. The Journal reads as if there were only one possible point of view, though the American medical profession (to say nothing of the extensive foreign readership) cannot possibly be in total agreement with the stances taken in its pages. It is thus more megaphone than sounding board. There is indeed much in the New England Journal of Medicine that deserves praise and admiration. But this book should encourage the general reader to take a constructively critical view of medical news and to be wary of the latest medical doctrines.

Theodore Dalrymple's work focuses on the moral decay of modern culture and the pernicious effect of political correctness on society. Anything Goes is a collection of some of his finest work written between 2005 and 2009 for New English Review. A note on the cover from New English Review Press: This jazz age photograph by Alfred Cheney Johnston reflects the classical conviction that the human form expresses a spiritual level of beauty, the artwork of God, if you will. It is also a statement about the essential humanism of Dr. Dalrymple's work. One cannot look at that figure and see an animal or a machine. Rather one sees something truly beautiful and truly human.

Theodore Dalrymple believes that almost everything people "know" about opiate addiction is wrong. Most flawed of all is the notion that addicts are in touch with profound mysteries of which non-addicts are ignorant. Dalrymple shows that doctors, psychologists, and social workers, all of them uncritically accepting addicts' descriptions of addiction, have employed literary myths (crugs are "creative" and "intense") in constructing an equal and opposite myth of quasi treatment. Using evidence from literature and pharmacology and drawing on examples from his own clinical experience, Dalrymple shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems. He argues that withdrawal from opiates is not a serious medical condition but a relatively trivial experience, and says that criminality causes addiction far more often than addiction causes criminality.

Prejudice, wrote Edmund Burke, renders a man's virtue his habit. How strange that sounds to modern ears In recent times, the word prejudice has come to seem synonymous with bigotry. Racial prejudice is taken to be typical of prejudice in general, and therefore the only way in which a person can establish his freedom from bigotry is by claiming to have wiped his mind free from prejudice altogether.In this wise and sprightly book, Theodore Dalrymple shows that this is impossible. It is impossible because no one can keep his mind as a blank slate on all questions until those questions are examined one by one. He also shows that the attempt to free oneself entirely from prejudice has several bad consequences, both for the person who makes the claim and for society as a whole.

What is the connection between God and East Sheen? How do you talk your way out of an Albanian jail? Why do dictators love to make comic books? How does a missed penalty-kick lead to a bloody war? Theodore Dalrymple, a psychiatrist who gives expert witness in murder cases, has a passion for sideways thinking. In The Pleasure of Thinking he takes us on a witty and erudite voyage along the hidden pathways that bring ideas together. At once light-hearted and enlightening, it is an amusing flight of the imagination in which we discover the happy accidents that befall those who remain endlessly curious.