n this snapshot of London in 1900, Jonathan Schneer has found an original and intriguing project. Emphasizing the indubitable role of British imperialism in shaping and influencing the city, Schneer examines aspects of London life in a series of vignettes, each of which can successfully stand alone. He moves from the lives of some of London's most celebrated laborers, the dock workers, to the businessmen who peopled the City of London near the docks where goods were literally exported and imported, hauled on and off the huge cargo vessels by the dockers. London's political hostesses enjoy a chapter almost of their own before Schneer moves to the circles of London radicalism in its various and imperial guises: the London Irish, and the Indians, Africans, and Caribbeans who peopled the city.