A profound enquiry into an urgent subject ... a brilliant book. - Arundhati Roy

With cool indignation, Davis argues that the exponential growth of slums is no accident but the result of a perfect storm of corrupt leadership, institutional failure, and IMF-imposed programs leading to a massive transfer of wealth from rich to poor ... Like the work of Jacob Riis, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens over a century ago, this searing indictment makes the shame of our cities urgently clear. - Michael Sorkin

The Raymond Chandler of urban geography ... In Planet of Slums, Davis's genre is the global disaster movie, as directed by the chroniclers of Victorian poverty: Engels, Booth, and Dickens. The scale of modern squalor revealed in his brilliant survey dwarfs its predecessors ... a coruscating tragedy.