- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Granta Books; Later Printing edition (18 Jun 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1862075212
- ISBN-13: 978-1862075214
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 128,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Essayist and cultural critic, now author of Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialised in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity and verve.
With some 12 million women being pushed into the labour 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 six to seven USD 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 USD 675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaner 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 behaviour 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 people who brought us welfare reform?" No, 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 ends up in a shelter.
As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humour and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are cheap in comparison to 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
Decca Aitkenhead, Guardian
'A superb book'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you have read, and liked, George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London then this is a book for you. The author writes engagingly and informatively on what it is like to part of America's "working poor" and, in the process, punctures a number of middle-class prescriptions for, and misconceptions about, the poor. Why do the poor eat junk food? Because they don't have the facilities - kitchen, pots, cooker - to make lentil soup. Why do the poor live in hotel rooms paying $60 per night? Because they don't have the money for the deposit on the rent of an apartment. Housing always emerges as the single biggest obstacle in the lives of low-paid employees. Did you know that many low-paid employees ($6-$7 per hour) live in their cars and vans? That a perk of a waitress' job with a hotel was permission to park her van-cum-home in the hotel car park? This book is in the best tradition of writing with a social conscience -it does not beatify the poor, nor does it regard them as unter-menschen. Indeed, the messsage that I, surrounded by my bourgeois comforts, took away was: "There but for the grace of God.." If you are not averse to this genre, then you should read this book - it is among the best of this type of writing.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Nickel and Dimed is a description of the author's temporary life at or below the poverty line in different jobs in 3 US cities. The book is actually quite short but packs in a fair amount of description, background facts and personality.
I have read some harsh criticisms of the book. However, the author was aware of many of these problems and she does not hide her faults. She is only 'visiting' the world of the poor, she does write more about herself than those she meets and she does make some decisions that, in some cases, make her ordeal needlessly worse whilst others make it easier.
Accept her failings as she does, and read a book that says a lot about US society and has many points that are transferable to the UK.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"I have been discovering a great truth about low-wage work and probably a lot about medium-wage work, too - that nothing happens, or rather the same thing always happens, which amounts, day after day, to nothing." - Barbara Ehrenreich
"I grew up hearing over and over ... 'Work hard and you'll get ahead' ... No one ever said that you could work hard - harder than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking ever down into poverty and debt." - Barbara Ehrenreich
If you're a middle or upper-income reader, then NICKEL AND DIMED is a vicarious journey to the other side of the wage earning tracks. Author Barbara Ehrenreich describes her 2-year self-immersion in several minimum-wage jobs for the purpose of writing this book. She mostly concentrates on three: waiting tables in Florida at a restaurant belonging to a nationally popular chain, e.g. Denny's, cleaning homes in Maine with The Maids, and sorting clothes in Minnesota on the sales floor of that favorite media whipping boy, Wal-Mart.
Indeed, a good portion of Barbara's narrative, rightly or wrongly, sounds like a Wal-Mart bash.
NICKEL AND DIMED is a lucid, eye-opening, and sympathetic account of the plight facing those millions that earn $7-$9/hour, or less, and still find themselves crushed by inflation and shrinkage of the nation-wide availability of affordable housing. According to Ehrenreich, it's the latter, and not the cost of food, and which is ironically driven by an increase in prosperity for the middle and upper classes, that's driving the working poor to greater levels of desperation. In the last paragraph of the book, the author predicts social revolution.
A criticism of Barbara's approach might be that it was an artificial construct inasmuch as she always had the safety net of her middle-class "real life" to fall back on when in extremis - that she never had to truly experience the outer edges of deprivation and resigned hopelessness. However, the alternative to her book would be one actually written by a minimum-wage earner - and which of those has the time and access to a publisher. No, I give Ehrenreich due kudos for her research and its result.
After reading NICKEL AND DIMED, I'll not view the clothing department of my favorite consumer superstore in the same way ever again, I'll be tempted to tip my restaurant server 20% instead of the minimum 15%, and I'll be more generous to our independent housecleaner at Christmas. Being an hourly employee myself, albeit a well-compensated one, I'm also reminded of the sobering truth:
"... when you start selling your time by the hour ... what you're actually selling is your life."
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Poignant and view changing read
Such an eyenopening read, read this for research into the equality element of my employment law module but would have read it anyway. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Bobx
Why I bought and read this book
I read on BookBrowse that Nickel and Dimed was on the list of the most "banned books" this year. I was curious to see why. Read more
Published 12 months ago by BarnaMarg
Small Change...
Barbara Ehrenreich has written a classic account of life in America's underclass, the people who are all around us, whose lives are rarely considered by the ones to whom they... Read more
Published 15 months ago by John P. Jones III
Prepare to enter a world that you'll thanks your lucky stars isn't...
A non-fiction work of an American journalist's attempts to live on minimum wages in various parts of the USA (yeah I know you know that already). First person, present tense. Read more
Published on 30 Aug 2009 by Build another bookcase
What you Get Out of It Depends on What You Bring to it
Barbara Ehrenreich goes undercover as an entry-level worker to determine whether or not she can make it on the wages paid to the majority of American employees. Read more
Published on 17 May 2009 by Graceann Macleod
Inside experience of the agony of minimum wage
The most unsettling aspect of Barbara Ehrenreich's eye-opening foray into the world of the working poor is that the situation hasn't improved. In fact, it's gotten worse. The U.S. Read more
Published on 29 Sep 2008 by Rolf Dobelli
Excellent and well researched
I found this book totally fascinating. It's basically the first hand experience of a middle class journalist who goes undercover to see if she can survive living on the minimum... Read more
Published on 28 July 2008 by Zara
Easy read on worthwhile subject.
Giving up a comfortable life to research on the job, her only income her wages, sampling motel living with kitchen facilities comprising the local 7-11 microwave. Read more
Published on 15 Feb 2008 by MYB74
A harrowing read
If you've ever wondered what it was like to skate the borders of being poor in America this is for you. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2007 by Wyvernfriend
She makes a few mistakes - I think, even though it is a good
book - it was time that the issue was adressed, however, I think she made a few mistakes in her approach. Read more
Published on 7 Feb 2005
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