Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich

Henry Holt and Company, Apr 1, 2010 - Social Science - 224 pages

The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted

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. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Judiex - LibraryThing

So many people say that if people only worked harder, they would be able to afford nice homes, adequate diets, decent schools for their children, and appropriate medical care. In 1999, author Barbara ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - AngelaLam - LibraryThing

An intimate analysis of the working poor told from the point-of-view of an undercover journalist who attempted to live and work for minimum wages in three locations in the United States for three ...

Contents

• Getting Ready: 1
• One Serving in Florida: 11
• Two Scrubbing in Maine: 51
• Three Selling in Minnesota: 121
• Evaluation: 193
• Nickel and Dimed: 223
• A Readers Guide: 241

About the author

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022) was a bestselling author and political activist, whose more than a dozen books included Nickel and Dimed, which the New York Times described as "a classic in social justice literature", Bait and Switch, Bright-sided, This Land Is Their Land, Dancing In The Streets, and Blood Rites. An award-winning journalist, she frequently contributed to Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College, and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
• Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, 2010
• ISBN: 1429926643, 9781429926645
• Length: 224 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Economic Conditions; Business & Economics / Labor / General; Social Science / Poverty & Homelessness; Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity