Summary and Reviews of Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich

Media Reviews

Business Week - Anne Colamosca Angry, amusing . . . An in-your-face expose.

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

Los Angeles Times Book Review - Stephen Metcalf Ehrenreich is a superb and relaxed stylist {with} a tremendous sense of rueful humor.

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

New York Times One of today's most original writers.

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

O The Oprah Magazine - Francine Prose Impassioned, fascinating, profoundly significant, and wildly entertaining...I kept grabbing family members and phoning friends to read passages aloud...Nickel and Dimed is not only important but transformative in its insistence that we take a long hard look at the society we live in.

The Boston Globe - Eileen Boris With grace and wit, Ehrenreich discovers . . . the irony of being nickel and dimed during unprecedented prosperity.

The New York Times - Diana Henriques . . . you will read this explosive little book cover to cover and pass it on to all your friends and relatives.

New York Times Book Review - Dorothy Gallagher 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.

School Library Journal - Dori DeSpain In a concluding chapter, Ehrenreich takes on issues and questions posed before and during the experiment, including why these wages are so low, why workers are so accepting of them, and what Washington's refusal to increase the minimum wage to a realistic living wage says about both our economy and our culture. Mandatory reading for any workforce entrant.

Library Journal - Jack Forman Looking back on her experiences, Ehrenreich claims that the hardest thing for her to accept is the invisibility of the poor; one sees them daily in restaurants, hotels, discount stores, and fast-food chains but one doesn't recognize them as poor because, after all, they have jobs. No real answers to the problem but a compelling sketch of its reality and pervasiveness.

Publishers Weekly Delivering a fast read that's both sobering and sassy, she gives readers pause about those caught in the economy's undertow, even in good times.