Rating: 
Summary: Very Well Written - Very Enlightening Book
Review: Wow, before reading this book if you would have told me that it was hard to live on $7 an hour I probably would have said ok, but I am sure it is not that hard. Then I read this book which detailed out sleeping in your car and having meals of just hot dog buns, this really drove the point home to me how hard it would be. This author took a year off of her normal job to live in three different parts of America and work at entry-level jobs. I guess the word "live" would imply a bit of a comfortable or even safe lifestyle, which, given the slums she had to live in is an over statement. The author sums up the book with some liberal leanings, but overall does not present a bunch of big government solutions to the problem. I do not think that was her point nor what she is good at. What she did do is present what life is like at the lowest rung of the current American economic ladder which is really eye opening. She is adding her voice to help a segment of the population that can not effectively speak for themselves in one of the richest countries ever. That is probably the most shocking thing for me, you would expect these kind of sad stories of poverty in parts of Africa, Asia or Central America, but not Key West Florida. Overall it was an entertaining and interesting book that you can finish in a weekend.
Rating: 
Summary: Eye-opener to world of minimum wage
Review: Barbara Ehrenreich actually puts herself in the position of a minimum-wage worker to get the full "minimum-wage experience." She records her journey of going through numerous job interviews, drug tests, and orientations only to finally get hired at a job paying a mere ... an hour. She reports her struggles of finding decent housing that is not only affordable to her small budget but also not too far from her job or jobs. Ehrenreich juggles up to two phsically-demanding jobs a day while still striving to meet her bills. She shows her surprise at some of the other employees she comes across through several jobs, and how they manage to do all she does while injured, sick, or even pregnant! Many of these workers have children or families to support from their salary alone. Ehrenreich is astonished at how hard these people work and how little they get in return. This document truly opens your eyes to how far some people will go to meet their needs (or at least some of them), and how most people do not realize the injustices they suffer every day.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful writing, good social experiment
Review: After having recently read "Nickel and Dimed" the first thing that stuck with me was Ehrenreich's skill as a writer. The prose is deft, and it reads well no matter what your preference (fiction, biography, &c.) happens to be. Comparisons with Orwell, especially "Wigan Pier" are accurate, though I would not go as far as to say that anyone is in his league today as a writer or social critic. There are only a few class assumptions that give me pause, thus the three (3.5 if I could) star choice. The first is the assumption that a journalist lives at an upper-middle, or at least (to borrow from Orwell) a lower-upper-middle class life standard. Some do, but the wage scale for a working journalist is far closer to the Home Depot ballpark than the author's. Second, the experiment does have a certain lack of Gestalt, as she lives only a month at a time in a given place, and one would have to suppose some of her upper-middle class background skews some real-life elements about this particular living standard. Ehrenreich, to her credit, makes no secret of this, which is a tribute to her honesty and integrity. I would say that middle- to upper-middle class people should absolutely read this. There is a lot of information that working-class people would take as a priori, but for the BoBos of the world, this is a very revealing book. She deserves further credit for the illuminating discovery that living standard is not really determined as a result of intelligence or work ethic, pointing out that as a PhD. holder, she is not found to have any distinguishing differences from her fellow laborers in the experiment. Despite misgivings about some of the aforementioned assumptions (I think that a person in this income bracket could have written such a book; but how would s/he get published without credentials?) the quality of the prose and the fact that a person in Barbara Ehrenreich's position could even comprehend the state of the Union below the poverty lane make this a must read.
Rating:
Summary: An ok book but nothing groundbreaking.
Review: I started this book with the hopes that she might get some real insight into what it's like to be a wage slave. To have to worry about how much money is coming, to never be able to take a day off, to have to work through whatever ailments you have. Unfortunately this book comes across more as a higher middle class woman "slumming it." From the very beginning she is realizes that she is set apart because she has her real life to fall back on. She doesn't deal with being forced to share an apartment because she can't afford one alone. She always has a car and she never goes without eating because she is cannot afford to. She always has a "real life" to fall back on. So each expedition into lower class wage slave is more like a sadomasochistic vacation. At one point she even mentions that she isn't willing to go to California because the Hispanics had "hogged all the low paying jobs". As if these people wanted so much to work multiple jobs. All of this is not to say she doesn't gain some valuable insight into the working world. She came to understand that despite how lowly a job may be that people tend to take pride in their work, and how despite their income how they try to make it easier for one another. Unfortunately because the book is so short you rarely get a feel for the people she meets. You have to take her word for what they are like. This makes the whole book feel rushed. At the end she has a chapter summing up her experiences. While it is a well thought out piece of writing it lacks any feeling for the desperation which the people she was trying to emulate feel every day.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting idea, but terribly flawed
Review: The author certainly has a great idea, and is to be commended for undertaking this project. Yet there is strong evidence that she entered into the project with the notion that living on the minimum wage would be impossible, and therefore did her best to fail. How else to explain her failure to share lodgings with another, something most of us have done somewhere along the line. There is simply no reason for a single person not to be able to share lodgings with two or three other people in order to make ends meet. Admittedly, finding roommates might not be easy for someone who flits around the country "sampling" the job market, but for real people this is a necessary option. Likewise, the author eats most of here meals in fast food and other restaurants. Again, real people would quickly find that foods like beans, rice, pasta and potatos, cooked at home, are virtually free. Ehrenreich is honest about her views towards employers, business and the wealth, and quite frankly she doesn't like any of them. She finds much work too demeaning for anyone to do. Cleaning toilets almost causes fainting spells when she has to deal with pubic hairs or even fecal matter in the toilet or under the seat. When some soapy toilet water dribbles on her shoe she has to supress the immediate urge to discard the shoe. You know, we've all cleaned toilets before. It isn't that awful. While working as a maid, the author is clearly offended that the rich seem to like John Grisham books. For pete's sake, what's wrong with liking John Grisham? The author seems to think that employee theft and employee drug use are just fine and dandy. Efforts by employers to eliminate both are presented by the author as silly, demeaning and ineffective. When there is a theft from a restaurant where the author is a waitress, she clearly sides with the thief. Despite the fact that studies show that drug users are much, much more likely to have an accident on the job or to miss extra days of work, the author is clearly hostile to any effort of employers to protect themselves. Given that achieving a drug-free workplace is the public policy of this nation, the author's views are clearly off-base. On a personal level, I certainly would not want to get by on the minimum wage. But I, like many readers of this book, attended college, where I found the basic costs of living to be quite low, since I shared my housing with others and cooked affordable meals at home. It's really not that hard. I'd like to suggest that the author embark on a new project. This time she should make some friends, find roommates and cook at home. Of course, the resulting book will be rather dull, but at least it will be a bit more honest.
Rating:
Summary: If You Can Afford to Eat Out, You Need This Book
Review:
This is an extraordinary book that every American who can afford to eat out, or rent a video, or visit a doctor, should be required to read.
I had no idea just how irrelevant the "poverty" line as a measure of true poverty--nor did I realize how constained people are, the 60% of America that earns less than $15 to $20 an hour, in seeking out other options. The author does a really effective job of investigating and communicating the horrible realities of life where...managers and corporate regulations and plain meanness deprive hundreds of thousands of people of things many of us take for granted: the right to go to the bathroom, to pause for a few minutes, even to sit down quietly for a few minutes in a clean room. Especially admirable is her focus on rent and the conditions that are imposed on the poor and lower working class (between minimum wage and $15 an hour)--not having enough money for a deposit, being forced to pay outrageous rents for decrepit motel rooms rented by the week, having to spend a precious working day finding a place to stay, etcetera. This is a very valuable book, both from the perspective of someone who might benefit from a little humility and gratitude for their blessings and advantages; and from a policy point of view--our understanding of poverty and welfare and what it takes to allow decent hard-working people to have a *life* appears to be terribly, terribly flawed. As the author documents so ably, it is not enough to have a job in America, you need to have one that pays enough to cover rent, food, and medicine. I was especially moved by the many details the author provided on how life at the lower levels brings on more and more hardships--not enough money for good shoes, bad shoes causing major spinal and related injuries and pain. The pain--the endless hours, the desperation for aspirin and other pain killers, cigarettes as the least expensive narcotic for the pain--this is very powerful stuff. At a minimum, this book changes how I will evaluate politicians that speak in ignorance about welfare and poverty and safety nets--and it is going to substantially increase how much I tip and how I tip--from 15% to 25%, and in cash... This might be a good time to think of ourselves, and follow the Golden Rule--our welfare system should be what we would want it to be if we were the ones asking for welfare.
Rating:
Summary: Insider scoop everybody should read
Review: This book is very important. It has a political message as well as a personal one. I think that it is very admirable of Ehrenreich to actually go out there and see what it is like to be poor. Not so glamorous. Ehrenreich describes the constant hassel required to obtain the very basics of life: somewhere to sleep, something to eat and some way of getting to work. This turns out to be a constant struggle; yet, for many of us, these are aspects of life we generally take for granted. I shuddered when I read about the quality of food that Ehrenreich ate - due to restraints not only of money, but time, cooking equipment and so on. This is one of the strengths of the book: the attention to detail. It feels more real when you have had a real experience, and Ehrenreich faithfully takes notes about what she has done during the day, what she has eaten and so on. Ehrenreich attempts to analyze not only what it is like to be poor, but also how it affects you as a human being, her being the primary example. This is not a thorough analysis though; that would have required more time and also more literature on the subject, I believe. Instead, the focus on this book is more of an eye-witness' story ... she was there, she saw this; in fact, she experienced this. This must be seen as one person's story, with all the limitations and advantages that brings. This is a book that is very hard to put away - I only did that for sleep and work. The stories of the people Ehrenreich encounters are very touching, and I cannot help but wondering what happened to them. The book contains insights, some very scary, about what it is like to live in the USA that I had no clue about. This is not another No logo; it describes what is going on inside the USA. It is a story about people who do not go to college or read the newspaper, and whereas they are human beings just like everybody else, they do not enjoy the privileges just like everybody else. Reading Nickel and Dimed is in a way to read a book about another place, another life. It is not exotic travel stories, and not sci-fi stories: yet, the places described seem at once familiar and very strange. I wonder why.
Rating:
Summary: Eye opening
Review: Not since "Black Like Me" has a book actually gotten so "up-close and personal" to the unbelievably tough life of millions of Americans who toil in dead-end minimum wage jobs. This book is a reminder that the Other America Michael Harrington wrote about years ago is still with us, and is still invisible. Despite its dead serious subject matter, it's written with razor sharp wit and will have your laughing through your tears. Buy it and pass it along.
Rating: 
Summary: Marie Antoinette becomes a waitress
Review: The book sets out with two objectives. First, to demonstrate what a lifestyle would be like for someone who is an entry level hourly worker. Secondly, to examine the 'on the job' life of the entry level hourly worker. As the author herself admits, the first aim is a failure. She frequestly falls back on the resources of her former life and arbitrarilly chooses not to take a higher paying job in favor of the lower-wage Wal Mart experience -an unrealistic choice. However, the book is successful on the second count. The book is an excellent ethnographic study of the often demoralizing life of our society's hourly employees such as maid, waitresses, and care providers. My main criticism is the author's inability to deal with political ideology with journalistic detachment. The specific welfare reforms which are the target of the book were developed and implemented by the Clinton administration - yet, her personal animosity against the republicans is a key recurring subtext in the book. I found this inconsistency to detract from her journalistic credibility.
Rating:
Summary: An eye-opener
Review: Barbara Ehrenreich takes the reader on a journey on what it's like to make a "minimum wage" in the U.S.A. She decides to attempt to live the life of a minimum wage worker in three different mid-sized cities. Barely getting by, even with special "perks" and "rewards" she gives herself, as well as aided by the fact that she starts off with no kids or medical problems, she shows the reader that it truly is practically impossible to live decently as a minimum wage worker in the U.S. today. While at times it is terribly depressing to face the reality, she also manages to inject several moments of humor and irony into what could have been a rather dull field report. A must-read for any U.S. citizen. and an eye-opener for anyone who has ever seen a homeless person on the street and thought.."oh, get a job!"
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