Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America.

EHRENREICH, Barbara.

$450.00

Item Number: 146483

New York : Metropolitan Books, 2001.

First edition, early printing of this work, which was named one of the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Octavo, original half cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “To Lynn- Thanks for your support of Measure ’25 Barbara Ehrenreich.” Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Raquel Jaramillo.

In this now classic work, Barbara Ehrenreich, our sharpest and most original social critic, goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity. Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job―any job―can be the ticket to a better life. 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.