Lady Cholmondeley certainly got more than she bargained for when she asked Bernard Shaw for "a few of [his] ideas of socialism." Bernard Shaw's sister-in-law expected a brief summary, a simple user's manual on his political and ethical beliefs. Instead in 1928 she was presented with a great tome that encompasses the meaning of life and just about everything, from marriage and children's upbringing to how to run industry. What she got was one of the great, passionate and indignant expositions of how social injustice destroys human lives. - foreword by Polly Toynbee