During the Great Depression, George Orwell went deep undercover to investigate the poverty and mass unemployment in the bleak industrial heartlands of northern England. Orwell chose to live as the coal miners did—sleeping in foul lodgings, subsisting on a meager diet, and going down into the backbreaking mines. In this contentious exposé, Orwell clarifies what the middle class fails to understand about the working poor, and examines how and why the socialist groups of the era fell short in promoting their cause.