Nickel and Dimed Nickel and Dimed

Nickel and Dimed

On (Not) Getting By in America

    • 3.8 • 214 Ratings
    • $11.99

Publisher Description

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 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 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.

GENRE
Nonfiction
RELEASED
2010
April 1
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
224
Pages
PUBLISHER
Henry Holt and Co.
SELLER
Macmillan
SIZE
2.4
MB

Customer Reviews

Nowaxz ,

Writer Tells It Like It Is

Unlike so many nonfiction books that outline the plight of the poor in the U.S., this author of this book took the time to show us just exactly how hard it is to exist on the minimum wage. She shows how hard it is to find and work a minimum wage job (she works several different jobs), find an affordable place to live, and buy enough meals to survive. And she shows how very, very hard it is. Yes, she doesn't show the other side (Wal-mart's or the other employer's.). But after reading this book, one wonders what excuse employers could have for paying people only enough income to keep their employees, effectively, in indentured servitude?

Danielle McQuillan ,

Great book!

Loved it! Absolutely fascinating!

QuiteFrankly89 ,

Amazing

Admittedly, this book was required reading for a college class. But after the first 10 pages, I was hooked. This author gives an extremely accurate description of the plight of the working poor! I admit I will never look at Walmart the same way again. I lived this life from the ages of 18-21, and related so many ways. I highly recommend this as a recreational read. And if you too are required to read this for a course, I assure you, it's not a typical "dry" college read.

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