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

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

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Editorial Reviews

The bestselling, landmark work of undercover reportage, now updated

Acclaimed as an instant classic upon publication, Nickel and Dimed has sold more than 1.5 million copies and become a staple of classroom reading. Chosen for “one book” initiatives across the country, it has fueled nationwide campaigns for a living wage. Funny, poignant, and passionate, this revelatory firsthand account of life in low-wage America—the story of Barbara Ehrenreich’s attempts to eke out a living while working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart associate—has become an essential part of the nation’s political discourse.

Now, in a new afterword, Ehrenreich shows that the plight of the underpaid has in no way eased: with fewer jobs available, deteriorating work conditions, and no pay increase in sight, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of fourteen books, including Dancing in the Streets and The New York Times bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. A frequent contributor to Harper’s and The Nation, she has also been a columnist at The New York Times and Time magazine.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. Inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. 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 strategems for survival. Read it for the clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom.
"A valuable and illuminating book . . . We have Barbara Ehrenreich to thank for bringing us the news of America's working poor so clearly and directly, and conveying with it a deep moral outrage . . . She is our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism."—Dorothy Gallagher, The New York Times Book Review
"A valuable and illuminating book . . . We have Barbara Ehrenreich to thank for bringing us the news of America's working poor so clearly and directly, and conveying with it a deep moral outrage . . . She is our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism."—Dorothy Gallagher, The New York Times Book Review

"Nickel and Dimed is a superb and frightening look into the lives of hard-working Americans . . . policymakers should be forced to read the last ten pages of Ehrenreich's book in which she concludes that affordable rent, food and health care should be among the chief measurements of a healthy economy, not simply high productivity and employment."—Tamara Straus, San Francisco Chronicle

"This book is thoroughly enjoyable, written with an affable, up-your-nose brio throughout. Ehrenreich is a superb and relaxed stylist, and she has a tremendous sense of rueful humor, especially when it comes to the evils of middle-management, absentee ownership and all the little self-consecrating bourgeois touches gracing the homes she sterilizes, inch-by-square-inch, as a maid in Maine."—Stephen Metcalf, Los Angeles Times

"With grace and wit, Ehrenreich discovers the irony of being 'nickel and dimed' during unprecedented prosperity . . . Living wages, she elegantly shows, might erase the shame that comes from our dependence 'on the underpaid labor of others."—Eileen Boris, The Boston Globe

"A captivating account . . . Just promise that you will read this explosive little book cover to cover and pass it on to all your friends and relatives."—Diana Henriques, The New York Times

"There is much to be learned from Nickel and Dimed. It opens a window into the daily lives of the invisible workforce that fuels the service economy, and endows the men and women who populate it with the honor that is often lacking on the job . . . In the grand tradition of the muckraking journalist, [Ehrenreich] goes undercover for nearly a year . . . What emerges is an insider's view of the worst jobs (other than agricultural labor) the 'new economy' has to offer."—Katherine Newman, The Washington Post Book World

"Ehrenreich is a wonderful writer. Her descriptions of people and places stay with you. If nothing else, this book illuminates the invisible army that scrubs floors, waits tables and straightens the racks at discount stores. That alone makes Ehrenreich's odyssey worthwhile."—Sandy Block, USA Today

"Nickel and Dimed is an 'old-fashioned,' in-your-face exposé . . . this important volume will force anyone who reads it to acknowledge the often desperate plight of Ehrenreich's subjects."—Anne Colamosca, Business Week

"Jarring, full of riveting grit . . . This book is already unforgettable."—Susannah Meadows, Newsweek

"I commend Barbara Ehrenreich for conducting such an important experiment. Millions of Americans suffer daily trying to make ends meet. Ehrenreich's book forces people to acknowledge the average worker's struggle and promises to be extremely influential."—Lynn Woolsey, U.S. Congress, Representing California's Sixth District

"A brilliant on-the-job report from the dark side of the boom. No one since H.L. Mencken has assailed the smug rhetoric of prosperity with such scalpel-like precision and ferocious wit."—Mike Davis, author of Ecology of Fear

"With this book Barbara Ehrenreich takes her place among such giants of investigative journalism as George Orwell and Jack London. Ehrenreich's courage, empathy, and the immediacy with which she describes her experience bring us face to face with the fate of millions of American workers today."—Frances Fox Piven, author of Regulating the Poor

"I was absolutely knocked out by Barbara Ehrenreich's remarkable odyssey as a waitress, hotel maid, cleaning woman, nursing home aide and sales clerk. She has accomplished what no contemporary writer has even attempted—to be that 'nobody' who barely subsists on her essential labors. It is a stiff punch in the nose to those righteous apostles of 'welfare reform.' Not only is it must reading but it's mesmeric. You can't put the damn thing down. Bravo!"—Studs Terkel, author of Working

"One of the great American social critics, Barbara Ehrenreich has written an unforgettable memoir of what it was like to work in some of America's least attractive jobs. Nickel and Dimed is a passionate meditation on the blindness of those with money and power. It is one of those rare books that wi

Customer Reviews

This is not literature!

Reviewed by A Customer, 2010-02-27

This book was actually mandatory reading for an English class. I could imagine it possibly for Journalism but English? What is the professor trying to imply? That English majors had better get used to being nickel and dimed? What is Ehrenreich really trying to say? That all students who are not PhD's will probably experience their share of Nickel and Dime jobs unless they claw their way up the ladder like she did in academia? That is the impression which I got in reading this book, having lived the nickel and dimed life as a college graduate for several years. In fact, there are a whole host of sob stories about cum laude graduates who have been forced to make a living working in factories, driving taxis, wait tables, etc. So what is new? Perhaps that Ehrenreich is willing to be a champion of the Nickel and Dimed. Well, that's great. But if one is looking for angst, passion, metaphors, personal growth, conflicts that are universal...nope, this is not it because one had the sneaky feeling this academian alway had her grant slush fund somewhere keeping her afloat.

Will probably confirm what those with family in low-wage America already know

Reviewed by Christopher Culver, 2010-02-19

Towards the end of the 1990s, Barbara Ehrenreich wondered whether America still offered unskilled workers the ability to survive and even prosper. Following the best traditions of investigative journalism, the author herself gave up her upper-middle class comforts and applied for low-wage jobs in three American locales. The results are disquieting, but all to be expected for many Americans who know that dropping to minimum wage can be an inescapable cycle of poverty.

Ehrenreich waited tables in Key West, cleaned houses for a maid service franchise in Maine and sold women's clothing in a Minnesota Wal-Mart. For each place she charts the challenges of the job -- exhausting physical labor, monotonous routines and a management which rarely pays the worker for all the time demanded from him. Ehrenreich's coworkers, who work harder and with more dedication than most of the readership of this book, are still consigned to living in hotels or in their cars for all their efforts. Ehrenreich lists her expenses and her paltry wages, revealing that making it can be impossible with only a single job. In way of conclusion she writes, "So the problem goes beyond my personal failings and miscalculations. Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You don't need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rents too high."

For most of NICKLED AND DIMED, the author does relatively low analysis of her situation at a wider socioeconomic level, simply referring to various studies in footnotes. These are a bit dry and few readers are going to chase citations. I feel that Ehrenreich's book could have made more of an impact had she explained the systematic deficiencies in the American labour market at the same time that she was dealing with them on a personal level. Still, the final chapter does bring the nationwide statistics.

For me the major message of Ehrenreich's book is the need for more unions. I've seen some complaints that NICKLED AND DIMED wants more government interference in the free market, but though Ehrenreich is openly leftist, she rarely calls for the welfare state. Rather, she points out that workers could drive up wages through organizing using only the same old laws that have existed since the 1930s. In the European country in which I currently reside, full-time employment in the same fields that Ehrenreich explored pays nearly twice as much, the result of nearly everyone having access to a union.

Ehrenreich's book is no major masterpiece of journalism, but it is an interesting read. For me, it revealed that the old days when a recent high school graduate employed in a basic small town job could through hard work make a solid foundation for himself are long past, and the poverty among my young relatives back in small-town Appalachia (Wal-Mart country) is now commonplace everywhere in the US. The issuing of a reprint in 2008 was welcome, if only to show that the situation hasn't gotten any better.

Very Eye Opening

Reviewed by F. Furqan, 2010-02-14

I got this book because it was required for a class and when I was finished it was a true eye opener. Although I've worked many low paying jobs but still am quite a bit removed from working for minimum wage and cleaning houses and working jobs that won't give you time of if injured for fear of losing your job. The reality of that is truly scary but the writer delivers this to us readers so vividly and realistic. To live like that is something I am glad to not have to but this should be read by everyone so we can remember how there are many out here who have so little options and fight to survive everyday.

The Experiment That Remains an Experiment

Reviewed by Michael G. Finucane, 2010-02-06

This book provides a much needed experimentation by journalists to step out of their own class strata. Ehrenreich provides some important examples on how the upper classes should evaluate the effects of their self serving bureaucratic interests, and of the danger that this poses to a society that is becoming more polarized in its class strata. While this book does deliver on Ehrenreich's own experiences as a low wage worker, it is only presented through the potential bias of a person from the upper classes. However, by providing some much needed experience to understand the great benefits she has as a member of the elite classes, the book often reads like an adventure defining the obvious--that low wage work is a cruel and undemocratic form of employment. I often see books of this type that reveal one of America's cleverest propaganda machine for capitalism and labor issues--the conscientious upper class person having sympathy for the working poor. While Ehrenreich does work for low wages in her experiment, she can always return to her job and her former lifestyle. Adam Shepard in his book "Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream" also does this to oppose Ehrenreich's view, but they are two upper class journalists that have the privilege and the voice to publish books with only brief "experience" living amongst the working poor. I would bet this book made upper class and upper middle upper class readers feel compassion for the poor, but it would only (in its satirical form) provide a false sense of appeasement in that something was actually be done (by someone else) to prevent further class division. However, Ehrenreich's book can be relevant because it can be also used to startle upper class persons out of continued apathy. If you read history, bad things happen when the middle class disappears. If you wanna keep your upper middle class job, read this book. If the poor rise up against you en masse, you wont be able to keep it.

required graduate school text

Reviewed by "Mature" grad student, 2010-02-05

Good price in used books, good prompt service. Interesting and thought provoking topic, quick read