Social mobility--the chance, through education, to achieve greater success compared to one's parents--is one of the most compelling issues of our time. In this book, a renowned professor, government adviser, and global change agent shares candid, poignant and occasionally hilarious personal experiences of social mobility. Deeply revealing, emotionally direct, and intellectually insightful, the book begins in 1950s Northwest England and takes readers up to the author's university education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He openly shares how class movement has affected him throughout life, links his narrative to classic and contemporary research and realities, and calls on society to reverse the increasing levels of social immobility and inequity worldwide.