Nickel And Dimed (20th Anniversary Edition): On (not) Getting By In America

By: Barbara Ehrenreich

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: Twenty years ago, Barbara Ehrenreich published a book that did not describe the lived realities of working poverty so much as imprint them somewhere deep in your conscience. The daughter of a copper miner turned journalist, Ehrenreich tem¬porarily left her normal, middle-class life to work in the low- wage labor market. The Clinton administration had recently reformed cash welfare, pushing millions of families off public aid and into the workforce. Members of both political parties were preaching work as the solution to poverty. Ehrenreich set out to see if they were right. In his journals, Nietzsche implored us to “experience the great problems with one’s body and one’s soul.” Well, here was a great problem—unacceptable levels of scarcity and hunger in one of the richest democracies in the history of the world—and Ehrenreich tossed herself into it.