The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our
sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew
Desmond, author of Evicted
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.
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 stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering
clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how
"prosperity" looks from the bottom. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew
Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,
explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more
relevant than ever.
