Best known for plays like Pygmalion and Saint Joan, Nobel Prize Laureate Bernard Shaw was a lifelong socialist and believed that economic inequality was a poison, damaging family affections and the relations between the sexes. Begun in 1924 in response to questions asked by his sister-in-law, Shaw's multi-faceted political treatise is an unsparing examination of the prevailing forms of government, and his observations—revised in the ensuing years—only became more pertinent with the passage of time. Shrewd, witty, and idealistic, it is above all a critique of the British Empire, whose downfall he anticipates here.