Rating: 
Summary: my review
Review: Barbara Ehrenreich gives ditailed look into the reality. the book gave me an insight to the side of america that i never new. it showed how hard it is working in a minimun wage and having to make ends meet.
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Summary: Hardly Finding Happiness
Review: Barbara Ehrenreich gives a detailed, eye-opening look into reality in her autobiography, Nickel and Dimed. Leaving her sheltered life for a journey for her independence and happiness, Ehrenreich explores the world around here while working on a minimum wage salary. Starting off in Key-West, Florida, she finds that finding a job and an apartment isn't as easy as it seems. "I never do find an apartment or affordable motel, although I make several attempts," Ehrenreich states. Learning new things along the way, she zips through Maine and right into Minnesota where she finds her final low-wage job. While explaining all of the pros and cons of her journey, she takes in all of the rules and lessons she has learned and incorporated them into her life.
The most admirable thing about this book is how she makes references to many statistics she has come across about low-wage jobs and the people that work them. Many people take for granted that they have high paying jobs and can easily support themselves, but fail to recognize the other people who work just as hard as they do for a much lesser pay. This gets people to realize what really goes on in America and how they work and live. On page 26, she gives a statistic on how people live, "According to a 1997 report of the National Coalition for the Homeless, nearly one-fifth of all homeless people are employed in full- or part-time jobs." This is just the tip of the iceberg of the information she touches on in this book.
Although it is hard to live on a low-wage job, she is, in a way, trying to infer that it is impossible to live on a low-wage salary. It isn't impossible, but it certainly is hard. These harsh statistics definitely prove that to be true. Nickel and Dimed is supposed to go in-depth on this subject, but in some cases, Ehrenreich goes too far in her explanations, and in some cases, stereotypes managers. On page 23, she is quoting her manager while at a meeting, "A break room is not a right, it can be taken away." I've held a job at one point in time and my manager was nothing like that. There are a few more too in-depth parts within the book.
Nickel and Dimed is an extraordinary book, which opens eyes of Americans all across the country. Going through the life of a low-wage worker is hard to live through, but the story has to be told. Between the good points of the book about the references to real-life situations and the weak points of going too far in-depth, this book is amazing and I would highly recommend this book to anyone. The life of Barbara Ehrenreich will change yours forever.
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Summary: A compelling look at the state of the nation's poor
Review: Ehrenreich went "undercover" and worked as a minimum wage worker and did so in order to better convey the epidemic of poverty that exists here in the world's richest nation. Millions of Americans have to struggle to survive and have no time or resources to attain an education or escape the poverty they were born into. Health coverage in this country continues to leave millions of Americans (including children) out in the cold and having to crowd into free clinics where the resources are limited and less than adequate. This is the reality that the wealth elites would have the masses not scrutinize. Instead, we get the whole "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" garbage. That's fine if you're born into a stable family and have had the advantage of going to safe and relatively competent schools (which I have had), but it is foolish to believe that those people who lack these advantages can simply rise above their lot in life without some aid (either in education or at least providing all Americans with basic food, shelter, and health coverage). What is perhaps even more disconcerting are the number of poor and middle class Americans who have bought into the whole conservative myth that the rich are the ones being discriminated against because people want to take away their hard-earned money! Exactly how hard does a person who inherits millions work? Does a CEO work any harder than a lifelong construction worker? It's about fairness. After a certain point, the money you've earned can be increased through investments and not hard work. And without an education and the means to attain wealth, the poor masses remain stuck in the position they were born into while the rich and privileged continue to pull the wool over the eyes of their supporters by duping them into believing that minimum wage is a livable wage. Not here in California it isn't. I work and go to school and barely scrape by, but I'm not going to complain. It's the people that I've known and still know who are stuck working low paying jobs and I see them barely making rent payments and going without health insurance that troubles me. Ehrenreich shows through example that working minimum wage jobs is not enough for survival in this country (even in states where the cost of living isn't as high as here in California or New York etc.). Not to mention the fact that the work is itself extremely taxing and no doubt there are many workers who toil their entire lives only to die in abject poverty and all so the very rich can keep their hoarded billions in a form of gluttony and greed that is pointless and contrary to the American dream. Ehrenreich has done us all a great service and this book is definitely worth checking out.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm on the fence
Review: Having struggled for many years, this book didn't tell me anything any poor person didn't already know (except, perhaps, that maid services don't wash the pee out of the rags between houses- eeeewe!), however, it's nice that she wrote it and served it up for the people who don't understand the struggle.
My biggest issue with the book is that the author seemed quite stuck-up and above it all, thinking that she was better than poor people. She walked away from jobs when she got too peeved- a *real* poor person has to just take all the crap that's dished out because they have to feed their kids.
So maybe it's eye opening for some, but I found it offensive for her to say she lived it. She dabbled in it; she did not live it.
Overall a positive review for the impact it's had on making people aware of the poverty struggle.
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Summary: Bold and engaging
Review: I heartily recommend this book as a sobering and engaging look at the trials and travails of low-income workers in America. Ehrenreich captures the desperation, fear, and all-too-frequent fatalism of minimum-wage employees, their demanding and often hypocritical managers, and the indifferent, affluent society that surrounds them. Eminently readable (I finished in just under a day), Ehrenreich handles with humor, insight, and not a few footnotes the problems our economic system has handed the workers at the bottom of the pyramid.On the downside, Ehrenreich lets her personal politics show through unfiltered, and I wonder if the image of the poverty-level worker she has fashioned is sometimes little more than a strawman. By their own admission, many of the workers she portrays have made poor life-choices; would increasing wages, providing decent benefits, and constructing a more "compassionate" work environment result in workers dumping their abusive partners, perpetually poor money management skills, work habits, or addictions that account for much of their misery? It's a chicken-and-egg question Ehrenreich dances around (or ignores, I couldn't tell which). And, while Ehrenreich holds corporate America largely responsible for the inequitable and inhuman treatment suffered by the workers, she fails to explain how a corporation that tolerated substance abuse, shoplifting or other forms of theft, and absenteeism -- all of which she personally has no qualms about in her co-workers -- could stay in business, let alone not be shut down by a government agency or sued out of existence in a product liability case. Ehrenreich describes reality at the worker level while short-changing realities at other levels. Nevertheless, it is not Ehrenreich's purpose to debate the complex interactions of the nation's economy. She is, first and foremost, an observer -- and she marvelously succeeds at conveying her first-hand experience as an undercover laborer. Numbers do not lie: she conclusively demonstrates that market conditions do not make "minimum wage" equal to a "living wage". She is not a John Howard Griffin -- when the going gets tough, she unapologetically dips into her previous-life resources while musing how hard this must be for the REAL minimum-wage worker. Her self-imposed one-month stays at each job site left me feeling she hadn't captured the full stories behind many of her reticent co-workers. Yet Ehrenreich must be praised for her willingness to go through this ordeal at any level, and her book is far more illustrative than a stack of journals and articles of reporters who tackle this issue from the outside. The real story of this book is that a well-educated, resourceful, healthy woman was unable to make her ends meet in low-wage jobs across the country; what should we expect from a portion of the population that lacks one or more of those advantages? Welfare "reform", as we know it, has not dispelled the struggling of the low-income wage earner. While I may disagree with Ehrenreich's proposed solutions, this book convinced me of the need for action.
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Summary: very intresting book
Review: i loved every minute of this book...its amazing how bad the minimum wage is and how its almost impossible to live off it. very good read, i definatly recommend it.
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Summary: Sad truth but entertaining book
Review: I read this book in a single sitting because I could not put it down. Barbara Ehrenreich goes 'undercover' to experience for herself the working, and living conditions that many low-wage workers have to endure. She notoces first hand how minimum wage (or slightly higher) paying jobs are incapable of sustaining adequate living needs. She also provides an exceptional account why it's so difficult for many people to rise above the lowest income levels despite their best efforts, showing how difficult it is for many of the workers she meets to rise above their income levels. Ms. ehrenreich , a biologist and writer for prestigious magazines, becomes a waitress, a house cleaner, a cook, and a Wal-Mart clerk - among other jobs and describes these experinces with the appropriate rigor but also with humor. Readers will also enjoy Ehrenreich's fitting sarchasm and spite amidst the sadness. I particularly enjoyed the WalMart chapter full of insight on Sam's brainwashing Big Brother ways. After you read this book you''ll become far more conscious of what the person behind the counter, your waitress or your maid are really feeling when they smile and accept your order.
Rating: 
Summary: Misleading Description/Introduction
Review: In her attempts to get by on a regular job, Ehrenreich vowed to follow a set of logical rules, which she did not always keep to. She also required to have her own apartment with a kitchen, own a car, and spend ~$9/day on food, and wouldn't work more than 40 hours a week at a rate of about $7/hour... she was taking many many luxuries and the numbers clearly weren't going to work out. She could have shared a place with someone, taken public transportation, or gotten another job if she really wanted these things. (I know for a fact that her housing expenses in Minneapolis could have been much less than the minimum housing cost she claimed, but she failed to look carefully and was very picky.)
Regardless of her failed attempt to enter a lower-paying job and live on the wage (which I was not convinced was near to impossible), she did give a personal view of many of the people she met. These personal accounts are the reason why this book may be worth reading for people interested in the topic. The book's description and introduction is misleading in that it claims Ehrenreich made a fair attempt, when she did not. The description should be focused on the personal relationships and observations she made. This misleading description and minimal real effort by Ehrenreich to live on $7/hour is why I have rated the book at 2 stars.
As an alternative to reading this book, I would suggest taking the 5 hours it would have taken to read this book and volunteer at a food shelter. You will do good AND you will come away with a better understanding of the difficulties of individuals who live at/below the poverty level.
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Summary: Good Book, has its moments
Review: In her latest social commentary, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover to experience, for herself, life as an "unskilled worker." In order to find out how anyone could survive on $7 an hour Ehrenreich left behind her life as a prominent member of the press, and underwent a journalistic foray into the world of the "low-paid" worker. For three month-long spans between 1999 and 2000, she took her car, laptop, and $1000 to three completely new locations and attempted to sustain herself while following her three rules. First, her educational background must not be a factor in her employment; second, she would take the job that paid the most; third, she would take the housing with the lowest costs while maintaining a suitable standard of living. Even as a healthy, white, native English speaker without the burdens of childcare or transportation issues, Ehrenreich soon experienced the mental and physical hardships that accompany life as a low-paid worker.
She worked as a waitress in Key West Florida, a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant in Maine, and finally a sales representative for Wal-Mart. She quickly noticed the limitations of her new life. At seven to eight dollars an hour, she found herself confined to "flophouses and trailer homes". Her food situation became restricted to fast foods and the cheapest of deli foods. She also was forced to deprive herself of many activities she had enjoyed in her previous life. Not only was she not making money, but her principal was actually shrinking and eventually in Maine, she was forced to hold down two simultaneous jobs in order to supplement her rapidly diminishing savings. Unfortunately, even while holding two jobs, she found herself slipping further and further out of her sense of financial security.
The true thrill of this book is not the exciting conclusion that Ehrenreich draws from her experiences as a member of the lower class, but her experiences along the way. Ehrenreich learned of the many injustices that plague these overlooked workers. She proves that no job is truly unskilled, and the "working poor" are as diligent as an executive or a journalist. However, it seems that no matter how hard they work they still seem to find themselves moving toward homelessness or worse. Their wages remain outrageously low, while their rent and expenses continue to rise astronomically.
Through this passionately written book, Ehrenreich tries to give an inside perspective into the challenges that millions of Americans face everyday, but that many of us may never experience. She gains an edge over any Academic, Economist, or Social Scientist through her personal approach. Actual accounts of people's lives give a private touch that draws us into the book. She writes in detail about full-time employees who cannot afford housing and are forced to sleep in their cars thus refuting the theory that a full time job assures the basic necessities of life. She addresses the invisibility of the poor to those living in the upper-middle class or as she terms, the "other half" (217). She tackles the economics of the lower working class and gives insight into the never ending cycle of poverty.
In a clear-cut style all her own, Ehrenreich confidently takes on these issues and addresses other potent subjects like the "living wage." She fits the "working poor" into the national economy and culture by deducing that the "working poor are the major philanthropists of our society." It is a masterfully written, humorous, and irate account of lower working-class America. Recommended to anyone who has ever had a job.
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Summary: Gives you a new perspective
Review: It is often said that "history is written by the winners," and in many ways our society's books are written almost entirely by those on the top half of the ladder - those with the most economic advantage, education and access. Barbara Ehrenreich, a member of the top rung of the ladder, gives it up temporarily so that she can say what it's really like to survive on a minimum wage. Granted, her experience is not entirely true to life, but it's going to be as close as many of us get, and it's an important perspective to have in light of congressional discussions about welfare and work programs. Reading her book will make you think more thoughtfully about the many problems faced by America's working poor.
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