Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass is a collection of essays written by British writer, doctor, and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple and published in book form by Ivan R. Dee in 2001. In 1994, the Manhattan Institute started publishing the contents of these essays in the City Journal magazine. They are about personal responsibility, the mentality of society as a whole, and the troubles of the underclass. Dalrymple had problems in finding a British publisher to help him turn his individual essays into a collection, so he eventually turned to American companies for publication.