Synopsis
In this study of America's minimum wage workers, the author explains how she went under cover several times, taking on different low-wage positions, to determine how adults who lack higher education survive. After working at Wal-Mart and as a waitress, she concluded that the working poor should be afforded more health care, housing assistance, and respect. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2002-05-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 230 pages | | Height: | 8.3 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 8.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
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.
Industry Reviews
"Sharp, empathetic, astute...."
Kirkus Reviews (04/01/2001)
"[A] valuable and illuminating book."
New York Times Book Review - Dorothy Gallagher (05/13/2001)
"[A] clear-eyed portrait of how the bottom third lives, and a complacency-shaking expose of the dead-end-job economy."
Entertainment Weekly - Megan Harlan (05/25/2001)
"Half-assed as her attempts to learn unfamiliar jobs may have been--and as funny as she sometimes makes the experience seem--Ehrenreich is still engaged in a serious project."
Nation (06/11/2001)
"...Ehrenreich's account of trying to survive on the breadline in three American cities is shocking, touching and unexpectedly funny."
Times Literary Supplement - Joan Smith (12/27/2002)
"NICKEL AND DIMED is one of the most significant works of social criticism any American leftist has written since the 1960s."
Nation - Michael Kazin (10/03/2005)
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