To understand how humans react and adapt to change we need to study people who live in harsh environments. From the death-row prisoners trading in prisons where money is banned to the stateless ethnic Russians shut out of Estonia's hyper-modern economy, every life in this book has been hit by a seismic shock, violently broken or damaged in some way. People living in these odd and marginal places are ignored by number crunching economists and political pollsters alike. Science suggests this is a mistake. This book tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme situations. 'Extreme' does not mean the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals of the financial pages. The book takes the reader to really odd places, the places that no-one visits. Places where part of the economy has been repressed, removed, destroyed or turbocharged. By travelling to each of them and discovering what life is really like, On the Edge tells small stories that shed light on today's biggest economic questions.