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

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.569092
EAN: 9780805063899
ISBN: 0805063897
Label: Holt Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: May 01, 2002
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Sales Rank: 991
Studio: Holt Paperbacks

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Product Description:

The New York Times bestseller, and one of the most talked about books of the year, Nickel and Dimed has already become a classic of undercover reportage.Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the 'lowliest' occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

Amazon.com's Best of 2001:
Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.

As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to 'girl,' trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as 'Some people work better when they're a little bit high.' In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.

So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the 'bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?' Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley Reed

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Good book. Very interesting
Enjoying the book thus far. Really gives practical information about what it is like to try to live on minimum wage.

Rating:

- Must read for the 'Haves' in this country
I have to admit, I grew up as person of privilege. I am from a large home in suburbia and drove a Mercedes SUV to high school every day. I was always taught to appreciate the things you have, and how lucky I am. Being born into wealth doesn't take talent, it takes luck. Even being born in the United States alone takes luck, you only had a 5% chance of being born here.

This book reaffirmed my core belief that while hard work and brains can get you places, the effect of the starting hand your dealt cannot be denied. I have to admit I am pretty embarassed to read some of these reviews that blame the poor for their lot in life. Just because hard work can lead to success in this country, doesn't mean it happens 100% of the time.

Here's a big lesson I learned: tip everyone. One dollar to you might mean almost nothing, but for the working poor it means a whole lot more. Treat employees with compassion ... Read More

Rating:

- Great Book
I heard about this book through my reading teacher and a student a few months ago. Out of curiosity I decided to buy the book.
I really enjoyed it. I loved how it was written in a diary format and how the author was so real and blunt about everyone and everything she came in contact with.

Hopefully this book will wake up the country.

Rating:

- It IS Realistic!
This was me! For those who reviewed the book and said that Ehrenreich was "unrealistic", I'm going to share my story. Several years ago my ex-boyfriend and I could have been in the book; we were each working a full-time job and he also had TWO part-time jobs at the same time (one after his full-time job and another on the weekends). Our jobs were in electronic sales at a big chain store and telemarketing which at the time paid $7.50 an hour. Yet we were still unable to make ends meet. After rent on our shoebox-efficieny apartment and utility bills, quarters for laundry and bus fare (we couldn't even afford a car! And even if we could have, we would not have been able to afford insurance AND gas.), we had hardly any money leftover for groceries and certainly NO money leftover for luxuries such as new clothes and new shoes (we did shop at thrift stores, but only when we really needed more outfits). After we ran out of ... Read More

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