Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job―any job―can be the ticket to a better life. 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 int 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 stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything―from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal―in quite the same way again.
Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job―any job―can be the ticket to a better life. 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 int 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 stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything―from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal―in quite the same way again.
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Find Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America Barbara Ehrenreich in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America Barbara Ehrenreich in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
2 books in catalog
Investigative non-fiction and social critique on economic inequality, working-class labor, and healthcare history have been profoundly shaped by undercover reporting and rigorous analysis. Barbara Ehrenreich brought first-person immersion and academic precision to popular discourse, producing influential works that examined systemic poverty and institutional power. Her most famous work, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, documented her experience attempting to survive on low-wage employment across the United States.
Born in 1941 in Butte, Montana—then a bustling, blue-collar copper mining town—she grew up in a family with deep working-class roots. Her father and maternal grandfather were both miners. Her father earned a degree from the Butte School of Mines, leading the family through frequent relocations across Pittsburgh, New York, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles. She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, beginning as a chemistry major before switching to physics to understand fundamental natural principles. She graduated with a B.A. in 1963 and pursued graduate studies at Rockefeller University, earning her Ph.D. in cell biology in 1968. She served as a staff member at the Health Policy Advisory Center in New York from 1969 to 1971 and taught at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.
With the birth of her first child in 1970, she experienced a political transformation and became involved in the early women's health movement. In 1972, she co-authored Witches, Midwives, and Nurses with Deirdre English, an underground bestseller that traced the history of female healers and the medical establishment. Seeking full-time creative independence, she left her university teaching position to focus on writing. Early financial hardship gave way to national prominence following a cover feature for Ms. magazine on feminism and health. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote regularly for Ms., Mother Jones, Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME, while remaining active in political organizations, including leadership in the Democratic Socialists of America.
Her prose is characterized by sharp wit, empirical observation, and an unyielding commitment to exposing systemic injustice. Drawing on her scientific training in cell biology, she approached cultural critique and social reporting with analytical rigor, grounding subjective experiences in economic data and historical context. Her writing balanced immersive participatory journalism with essayistic critique, often employing self-deprecating humor to highlight the absurdity and harshness of corporate and institutional norms.
Central themes across her work include the hidden costs of low-wage labor, the commodification of health and wellness, gender politics, and the social function of collective rituals. Whether investigating the myth of positive thinking, corporate downsizing, or the origins of human warfare, her writing challenged accepted economic orthodoxies and advocated for working-class labor rights, universal healthcare, and political activism.
2 books in catalog
Investigative non-fiction and social critique on economic inequality, working-class labor, and healthcare history have been profoundly shaped by undercover reporting and rigorous analysis. Barbara Ehrenreich brought first-person immersion and academic precision to popular discourse, producing influential works that examined systemic poverty and institutional power. Her most famous work, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, documented her experience attempting to survive on low-wage employment across the United States.
Born in 1941 in Butte, Montana—then a bustling, blue-collar copper mining town—she grew up in a family with deep working-class roots. Her father and maternal grandfather were both miners. Her father earned a degree from the Butte School of Mines, leading the family through frequent relocations across Pittsburgh, New York, Massachusetts, and Los Angeles. She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, beginning as a chemistry major before switching to physics to understand fundamental natural principles. She graduated with a B.A. in 1963 and pursued graduate studies at Rockefeller University, earning her Ph.D. in cell biology in 1968. She served as a staff member at the Health Policy Advisory Center in New York from 1969 to 1971 and taught at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.
With the birth of her first child in 1970, she experienced a political transformation and became involved in the early women's health movement. In 1972, she co-authored Witches, Midwives, and Nurses with Deirdre English, an underground bestseller that traced the history of female healers and the medical establishment. Seeking full-time creative independence, she left her university teaching position to focus on writing. Early financial hardship gave way to national prominence following a cover feature for Ms. magazine on feminism and health. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote regularly for Ms., Mother Jones, Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME, while remaining active in political organizations, including leadership in the Democratic Socialists of America.
Her prose is characterized by sharp wit, empirical observation, and an unyielding commitment to exposing systemic injustice. Drawing on her scientific training in cell biology, she approached cultural critique and social reporting with analytical rigor, grounding subjective experiences in economic data and historical context. Her writing balanced immersive participatory journalism with essayistic critique, often employing self-deprecating humor to highlight the absurdity and harshness of corporate and institutional norms.
Central themes across her work include the hidden costs of low-wage labor, the commodification of health and wellness, gender politics, and the social function of collective rituals. Whether investigating the myth of positive thinking, corporate downsizing, or the origins of human warfare, her writing challenged accepted economic orthodoxies and advocated for working-class labor rights, universal healthcare, and political activism.
