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The bestselling, landmark work of undercover reportage, now updated Acclaimed as an instant classic upon publication, Nickel and Dimed has sold more than 1.5 million copies and become a staple of classroom reading. Chosen for “one book” initiatives across the country, it has fueled nationwide campaigns for a living wage. Funny, poignant, and passionate, this revelatory firsthand account of life in low-wage America—the story of Barbara Ehrenreich’s attempts to eke out a living while working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart associate—has become an essential part of the nation’s political discourse. Now, in a new afterword, Ehrenreich shows that the plight of the underpaid has in no way eased: with fewer jobs available, deteriorating work conditions, and no pay increase in sight, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever. Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of fourteen books, including Dancing in the Streets and The New York Times bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. A frequent contributor to Harper’s and The Nation, she has also been a columnist at The New York Times and Time magazine. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. Inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour?
To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity—a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategems for survival. Read it for the clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. "A valuable and illuminating book . . . We have Barbara Ehrenreich to thank for bringing us the news of America's working poor so clearly and directly, and conveying with it a deep moral outrage . . . She is our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism."—Dorothy Gallagher, The New York Times Book Review "A valuable and illuminating book . . . We have Barbara Ehrenreich to thank for bringing us the news of America's working poor so clearly and directly, and conveying with it a deep moral outrage . . . She is our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism."—Dorothy Gallagher, The New York Times Book Review
"Nickel and Dimed is a superb and frightening look into the lives of hard-working Americans . . . policymakers should be forced to read the last ten pages of Ehrenreich's book in which she concludes that affordable rent, food and health care should be among the chief measurements of a healthy economy, not simply high productivity and employment."—Tamara Straus, San Francisco Chronicle
"This book is thoroughly enjoyable, written with an affable, up-your-nose brio throughout. Ehrenreich is a superb and relaxed stylist, and she has a tremendous sense of rueful humor, especially when it comes to the evils of middle-management, absentee ownership and all the little self-consecrating bourgeois touches gracing the homes she sterilizes, inch-by-square-inch, as a maid in Maine."—Stephen Metcalf, Los Angeles Times
"With grace and wit, Ehrenreich discovers the irony of being 'nickel and dimed' during unprecedented prosperity . . . Living wages, she elegantly shows, might erase the shame that comes from our dependence 'on the underpaid labor of others."—Eileen Boris, The Boston Globe
"A captivating account . . . Just promise that you will read this explosive little book cover to cover and pass it on to all your friends and relatives."—Diana Henriques, The New York Times
"There is much to be learned from Nickel and Dimed. It opens a window into the daily lives of the invisible workforce that fuels the service economy, and endows the men and women who populate it with the honor that is often lacking on the job . . . In the grand tradition of the muckraking journalist, [Ehrenreich] goes undercover for nearly a year . . . What emerges is an insider's view of the worst jobs (other than agricultural labor) the 'new economy' has to offer."—Katherine Newman, The Washington Post Book World
"Ehrenreich is a wonderful writer. Her descriptions of people and places stay with you. If nothing else, this book illuminates the invisible army that scrubs floors, waits tables and straightens the racks at discount stores. That alone makes Ehrenreich's odyssey worthwhile."—Sandy Block, USA Today
"Nickel and Dimed is an 'old-fashioned,' in-your-face exposé . . . this important volume will force anyone who reads it to acknowledge the often desperate plight of Ehrenreich's subjects."—Anne Colamosca, Business Week
"Jarring, full of riveting grit . . . This book is already unforgettable."—Susannah Meadows, Newsweek
"I commend Barbara Ehrenreich for conducting such an important experiment. Millions of Americans suffer daily trying to make ends meet. Ehrenreich's book forces people to acknowledge the average worker's struggle and promises to be extremely influential."—Lynn Woolsey, U.S. Congress, Representing California's Sixth District
"A brilliant on-the-job report from the dark side of the boom. No one since H.L. Mencken has assailed the smug rhetoric of prosperity with such scalpel-like precision and ferocious wit."—Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear
"With this book Barbara Ehrenreich takes her place among such giants of investigative journalism as George Orwell and Jack London. Ehrenreich's courage, empathy, and the immediacy with which she describes her experience bring us face to face with the fate of millions of American workers today."—Frances Fox Piven, author of Regulating the Poor
"I was absolutely knocked out by Barbara Ehrenreich's remarkable odyssey as a waitress, hotel maid, cleaning woman, nursing home aide and sales clerk. She has accomplished what no contemporary writer has even attempted—to be that 'nobody' who barely subsists on her essential labors. It is a stiff punch in the nose to those righteous apostles of 'welfare reform.' Not only is it must reading but it's mesmeric. You can't put the damn thing down. Bravo!"—Studs Terkel, author of Working
"One of the great American social critics, Barbara Ehrenreich has written an unforgettable memoir of what it was like to work in some of America's least attractive jobs. Nickel and Dimed is a passionate meditation on the blindness of those with money and power. It is one of those rare books that wi ...
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A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis. With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage. Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of numberous books, including Dancing in the Streets and The New York Times bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. A frequent contributor to Harper’s and The Nation, she has also been a columnist at The New York Times and Time magazine. In Bright-sided, Barbara Ehrenreich reveals how the positive thinking movement, though seemingly harmless, has in fact deluded America and played a role in some of the most destructive events in recent U.S. history. Far from just a “healthy mindset,” bright-siding is an epidemic of self-deception that has spread to all circles of American life, from preachers who celebrate the power of prayer, to doctors who promote optimism’s healing abilities. It led officials to overlook clues of 9/11 and overestimate the strength of New Orleans’ levees, and enabled the business world to make egregiously unsafe loans that caused the worst financial crisis since World War II. Ehrenreich exposes the consequences of the belief that positive thinking is the key to achieving success and prosperity—a notion which, at its most dangerous, prevents people from even considering the negative outcomes of major events or their own actions. “In this hard-hitting but honest appraisal, America’s cultural skeptic Barbara Ehrenreich turns her focus on the muddled American phenomenon of positive thinking. She exposes the pseudoscience and pseudointellectual foundation of the positive-thinking movement for what it is: a house of cards. This is a mind-opening read.”—Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time “We're always being told that looking on the bright side is good for us, but now we see that it's a great way to brush off poverty, disease, and unemployment, to rationalize an order where all the rewards go to those on top. The people who are sick or jobless—why, they just aren't thinking positively. They have no one to blame but themselves. Barbara Ehrenreich has put the menace of positive thinking under the microscope. Anyone who's ever been told to brighten up needs to read this book.”—Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew and What's the Matter with Kansas? “Unless you keep on saying that you believe in fairies, Tinker Bell will check out, and what’s more, her sad demise will be your fault! Barbara Ehrenreich scores again for the independent-minded in resisting this drool and all those who wallow in it.”—Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything “In this hard-hitting but honest appraisal, America’s cultural skeptic Barbara Ehrenreich turns her focus on the muddled American phenomenon of positive thinking. She exposes the pseudoscience and pseudointellectual foundation of the positive-thinking movement for what it is: a house of cards. This is a mind-opening read.”—Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time “Once again, Barbara Ehrenreich has written an invaluable and timely book, offering a brilliant analysis of the causes and dimensions of our current cultural and economic crises. She shows how deeply positive thinking is embedded in our history and how crippling it is as a habit of mind.”—Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History “Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil: please read this relentlessly sensible book. It’s never too late to begin thinking clearly.”— Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays “Barbara Ehrenreich’s skeptical common sense is just what we need to penetrate the cloying fog that passes for happiness in America.”—Alan Wolfe, author of The Future of Liberalism “In this hilarious and devastating critique, Barbara Ehrenreich applies some much needed negativity to the zillion-dollar business of positive thinking. This is truly a text for the times.”—Katha Pollitt, author of The Mind-Body Problem: Poems "Ehrenreich convinced me completely. . . I hesitate to say anything so positive as that this book will change the way you see absolutely everything; but it just might."—Nora Ephron, The Daily Beast "Accomplished social critic Ehrenreich eviscerates the positive-thinking movement, which she blames for encouraging us to 'deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate.' The author argues that the promotion of unwarranted optimism began in the early days of the American republic, was taken up by 19th-century philosophers and mystics—William James urged people to repeat to themselves 'Youth, health, vigor!' while dressing in the morning-and entered the American mainstream in the 20th century, when it became an integral part of consumer culture. Ehrenreich's quarrel is not with feeling upbeat but rather with the 'inescapable pseudoscientific flapdoodle' of life coaches and self-improvement products claiming that thinking positively will result in wealth, success and other joyful outcomes. Such magical thinking has become a means of social control in the workplace—where uncheerful employees are ostracized—and prevents action to achieve social change. Wi ...
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The author of Fear of Falling traces the evolution of human warfare from an elite religion of a privileged caste reenacting the experience of predation to a rite of mass worship that we know today as nationalism. 30,000 first printing. Tour....
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America in the ’aughts—hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by one of the country’s most prominent social critics Now in paperback, Barbara Ehrenreich’s widely acclaimed This Land Is Their Land takes the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory and finds lurid extremes all around. While members of the moneyed elite have bought up congressmen, many in the working class can barely buy lunch. While a wealthy minority obsessively consumes cosmetic surgery, the poor often go without health care for their children. And while the Masters of the Universe have thrown themselves into the casino economy, the less fortunate have been fed a diet of morality, marriage, and abstinence. With perfect satiric pitch, Ehrenreich reveals a country scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty. Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation—including new and unpublished essays—confirm once again that Ehrenreich is, as the San Francisco Chronicle proclaims, “essential reading.” ...
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An ALA Notable Book
A New York Times Notable Book
In Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the mystery of the human attraction to violence: What draws our species to war and even makes us see it as a kind of sacred undertaking? Blood Rites takes us on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Sifting through the fragile records of prehistory, Ehrenreich discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place--not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experience of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception, rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that will transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.
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America in the 'aughts---hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by the bestselling social critic hailed as "the soul mate" of Jonathan Swift. ...
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