Ch. 1. Starting out --
Ch. 2. A home --
Ch. 3. The agency --
Ch. 4. Spending --
Ch. 5. Portering --
Ch. 6. Job-hunting --
Ch. 7. Dinner lady – always happy, never sad --
Ch. 8. Nursery --
Ch. 9. Clapham park neighbours --
Ch. 10. Cold-calling --
Ch. 11. Early-morning cleaning --
Ch. 12. Cakes --
Ch. 13. Care home --
Ch. 14. It doesn't have to be this way --
Ch. 15. Then and now.

Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee took up the challenge: living in one of the worst council estates in Britain and taking whatever was on offer at the job centre. What she discovered shocked her.

In telesales and cake factories, as a hospital porter or a dinner-lady, she worked at a breakneck pace for cut-rate wages, alongside working mothers and struggling retirees. The service sector is now administered by seedy agencies offering no prospects, no screening and no commitment. And, perhaps, most damming of all, Toynbee found that, despite the optimism of Tony Blair's New Deal, the poorly paid effectively earn less than they did thirty years ago.

Britain has the lowest social spending and the highest poverty in Europe. As the income gap between top and bottom has widened, so social mobility has shuddered to a halt.

Is this the end of social progress? In this compelling, powerfully written and impassioned book, Polly Toynbee shows that unless we acknowledge the poor and radically improve their prospects, it will be.