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Holistic Guidance - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
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List Price: $14.00
Our Price: $11.20
Your Save: $ 2.80 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.569092
EAN: 9780805088380
ISBN: 0805088385
Label: Holt Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2008-06-24
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Release Date: 2008-06-24
Studio: Holt Paperbacks
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Editorial Reviews:
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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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointing with few insights
Comment: The only reason I gave two stars to this book is because at least Ehrenreich tried to write about an important topic. But her execution falls well below the mark, and the book turns out to be more about a journalist pretending to be a low-income worker than about the lives of the low-income workers she's supposedly studying. It is, by turns, whiny, preachy, self-righteous, facile, and annoying -- much more often than it's insightful, which it is maybe a handful of times (if that) throughout the book. (The footnotes were actually among the most informative parts.) At times she even seems to be making fun of the workers with whom she briefly shared her life. And the "experiment" is flawed from the start, as the author herself more or less acknowledges, in that someone who knows that she can return to her real life any time is very different from someone who works for $7 an hour and has no choice. One also has to question the ethics of a decision to take a job that someone else really needs. Finally, as the book progresses, the author makes some bumbling attempts at humor that just aren't funny -- it feels like the writing of someone who thinks she's being clever but the jokes are flat or obvious, or someone who utters banalities as if they were profound insights. (Please, leave satire to the satirists.) One line in the book stood out for me as a reflection of everything that is wrong with it, and it was hard for me to keep reading after that. In the chapter on her experience in Maine, Ehrenreich asks the reader, "If you hump away at menial jobs 360-days-plus a year, does some kind of repetitive injury of the spirit set in?" Well, DUH. As my partner pointed out, that sounds like the kind of idiotic "wisdom" that might show up on Carrie Bradshaw's computer in "Sex in the City."
So Ehrenreich gets some points for effort and for "humping away" at these jobs for as long as she did, I suppose, but as far as offering any real insights into or solutions for the lives of the working poor, this book leaves much to be desired. In the end, it's a book about Barbara Ehrenreich.
Customer Rating:
Summary: EVERYTHING IN LIFE IS RELATIVE
Comment: Well, what Ms. Ehrenreich doesn't know is that there is MUCH MUCH worse to come!! In just a few years when the greatest depression in US history (13 years long) is visited upon us, surviving on the minimum wage will seem like the good old days. Sadly, people will be glad to work under the conditions she's explored. Everything is relative. Don't think it's going to happen? Read Arnold's The Great Bust Ahead ([...]). The Great Bust Ahead: The Greatest Depression in American and UK History is Just Several Short Years Away. This is your Concise Reference Guide to Understanding Why and How Best to Survive It.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Read it and understand
Comment: Another book explaining how we as a superpower are continuing to do a disservice to our own people. We can spend Billions on other countries to insure they have high-speed internet, but fight when it comes to guarnteeing medical for our children. It is not just that the system is not working... it is so far broken that it has been forgotten. How do we fix this? My grandma suggested an atmoic bomb, and although I thought this was ludicrious at first, I am begining to come around.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Perhaps she meant well
Comment: If you'd like to hear the voices of the real working poor, get a copy of Without A Net: the female experience of growing up working class, edited by Michelle Tea. It is more poignant than a journalist's game of dress up.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bitter is as Bitter Does.. why I, as an employer, would NEVER hire her
Comment: I think the premise was a good idea as a whole, but I don't believe Barbara Ehrenreich was the one to present it.
She tends to have a victim attitude in life, and a contempt for people who are successful, which I find ironic since I am sure she is not standing on a street corner giving away her profits from the book.
She opens fine and the footnotes are somewhat interesting but then she goes off on tangents that have nothing to do with the book. She claims to have this disdain for others who she feels are elitists but then she turns around and does the same thing herself. One example, which has no place in this story, in my opinion is when she, as an avid atheist, decided to attend a revival for fun, then not only proceeded to mock the people who went but called Jesus a socialist among other things I would rather not repeat. My opinion of her formed very quickly from that point.
She also points out that management in one of the companies she works for were simply jerks. Granted we all know the types but she didn't even try to see it from a balanced point of view. The Maid Company she worked for had some hard rules, like no water on the job, etc., which I found to be unreasonable, however she ended up blaming the homeowners, some that she never met. She had disdain for a Buddhists home who had spiritual messages throughout his house, once again she never met this person, yet felt free to judge.
Also as far as management is concerned, as a business owner I realize how some people are in this position but there are also two sides to a coin. She mentions how much she dislikes the people she works for with the "rules" yet in the next breath she talks about her and the "maids" in the company car driving through a nice area with the radio blarring and yelling "F*** YOU" out the car window to moms with stollers. When they cringed she mentions how she finds this behavior hysterically funny. Gee and you wonder why they have to set up rules. I wouldn't want her representing my company.
The book is not balanced. Last but not least, she claims so many of these people are in poverty, yet I can't help notice how many of them have no "lunch " money yet have plenty of funds for smoking and having kid after kid. Just an observation. It's too bad really the subject matter would have been good had it not been so tainted by attitude.
I have no doubt there are a great deal of working poor who are making ends meet and having a hard time. Those are the people she should have sought out. I believe she was too blinded by her anger or perhaps guilt over her own success to see it clearly.
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