Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America--A Story of the Working Poor and the Need for a Living Wage

The New York Times bestseller, and one of the most talked about books of the year, Nickel and Dimed has already become a classic of undercover reportage.Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that even the "lowliest" occupations require exhausting mental and physical efforts. And one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity — a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

Review:

"Ehrenreich's scorn withers, her humor stings, and her radical light shines on." The Boston Globe

Review:

"Ehrenreich is passionate, public, hotly lucid, and politically engaged." Chicago Tribune

Review:

"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 and a finely textured sense of lives as lived. As Michael Harrington was, she is now our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism." Dorothy Gallagher, New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Barbara Ehrenreich is smart, provocative, funny, and sane in a world that needs more of all four." Diane Sawyer

Review:

"Nickel and Dimed is an important book that should be read by anyone who has been lulled into middle-class complacency." Vivien Labaton, Ms. Magazine

Review:

"[Ehrenreich's] account is at once enraging and sobering....Mandatory reading for any workforce entrant." School Library Journal

Review:

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

Synopsis:

Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages. Social critic Barbara Ehrenreich joined them, moving into a trailer and working as a waitress, hotel maid, and Wal-Mart sales clerk. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and duality.