In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond countingâ€‌ in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Meanwhile Asha, a woman of formidable ambition, has identified a shadier route to the middle class. With a little luck, her beautiful daughter, Annawadi’s “most-everything girl,â€‌ might become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest children, like the young thief Kalu, feel themselves inching closer to their dreams. But then Abdul is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power, and economic envy turn brutal. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects people to one another in an era of tumultuous change, based on years of uncompromising reporting,carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds—and into the hearts of families impossible to forget. آ  /The Daily BeastMinneapolisSalonSlate آ  “A book of extraordinary intelligence [and] humanity . . . beyond groundbreaking.â€‌ “Reported like Watergate, written like and handily the best international nonfiction in years.â€‌“This book is both a tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece.â€‌ آ  “[A] landmark book.â€‌ “A triumph of a book.â€‌ آ  “There are books that change the way you feel and see; this is one of them.â€‌ آ  “[A] stunning piece of narrative nonfiction . . . [Katherine] Boo’s prose is electric.â€‌ “Inspiring, and irresistible . . . Boo’s extraordinary achievement is twofold. She shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.â€‌