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Summary: Nickel and Dimed Review
Review: Ehrenreich goes undercover to experience and write about the lower class in America. Everybody knows that to live with the lowest wages is hard. However, nobody thinks about how unskilled people end up and continue to be in such a situation. Barbara Ehrenreich planned to write about unskilled people who have to live with the wages available for them. Trying to hide her education she took the best job available for unskilled people, and she tried to find housing where she could live with the low wage given to her.
She did her experiment in Florida, Main and Minnesota. Ehrenreich had hard times to find an apartment and often lived in cheap motels. She founds out that it is difficult, almost impossible, to live with the lowest wage and therefore many people need to work in two or more jobs. She works with people that are uneducated and have to live with only the little money they can earn, while Ehreneich had back up funds and knew that she would return to her better life. It is frustrating to see how she and her coworkers live in a situation that at the end seems even worse then at the beginning. The poor could have an opportunity to find better jobs. However, the situation does not allow for it because the lower paid jobs are in a neighborhood where they can also afford to live, and they do not have the time and ability to search for better jobs in other areas.
Ehrenreich's experiences in Florida, Main and Minnesota are very different but in the end her conclusion is that governments do not care enough for the lower class in America.
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Summary: I loved this book
Review: It makes you realize how impossible it is to survive on mimimum wage..very interesting read
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Summary: An Easy Read
Review: This book was very interesting to read. i had to read it for a book review for my Economics class, and it didnt seem like homework at all. It motivated me to shape up and go to college. I dont want to end up working a minimum wage job for the rest of my life. However, I wasnt surprised at Ehrenreichs results. This is a huge problem which our government needs to deal with. i recommend this book to all.
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Summary: A Working Class Step in the Right Direction
Review: I began reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed as part of a Sociology lecture requirement at Temple University. I read the book for a lesson in Sociology. What I got was a lesson in life. Not only have I read the book twice, but I have also seen the play in Philadelphia.
Nickel and Dimed is separated into three different circumstancial living conditions where Barbara, author of twelve books at the moment, takes on the challenge of an average working class citizen just trying to get by. Some feel that by doing so, she's patronizing those who she has been imitating. This is not the case at all. In order to fix a problem, you have to understand the source at hand. The problem addressed here, in our economy, is poverty. What better way to understand the source, than to literally put yourself at the mercy of it. (That being a globalized, industrial society). The writer sets a goal, not to see what she can do with her leftover money, but to match her expenses with her income and to survive on these conditions. Here, she puts an emphasis on the true conditions of the working class, perhaps overlooked by those who are not subject to them. We are finally taking a new perspective as to what's wrong with our society- the first step in making a change.
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Summary: MAud Arnold Review
Review: I thought that this book was decent. However, she is patronizing the life of low wage workers. She has made a lot of money off of this book and the difficulties of the lower class. I respect her for her initiative to do this, however it was not a true expeience. It was very well written and captivating.
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Summary: Nice narrative but not a research project
Review: The author had "fun" exploring low-wage jobs but provides no authoritative look at what the numbers mean for wages and survival. She throws statistics around but does not know how to use the numbers. She advocates a "living wage" merely on the basis of anecdotal evidence that one cannot survive on the minimum wage without analyzing what it would do to the availability of jobs. She describes workers earning low wages who have no desire to change their [drug and party] lifestyles for behavior that would allow them to hold better jobs.Interesting reading, but I was looking for more understanding of the entire low-wage scene rather than anecdotes voiced in bitchy resentment.
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Summary: Justice for the people who sacrafice
Review: This is a great book for anyone to read. It is interesting to see this journalist experience life as a poor working class woman stuggling to survive. Ehrenreich serves justice to all those people who work endless hours each day just to ensure that rich people can live happy and cheap. Recomended for anyone who wonders what life is like on the other side of the fence.
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Summary: Not Particularly Succint or Brilliant
Review: This book is exactly what I try to stay away from: New York Times Bestselling garble. I had to read it and write a paper on it for a class a few weeks ago, so I feel more or less able to comment. What I saw was a mildly insulting journalistic poke into the world of people who really aren't getting by in America. The only thing Marxist about this book is that it takes place in the world of the proletarian (I think she even uses that term once or twice), and not in factories or mailrooms, either. The job titles author Ehrenreich acquires include waitress, sales associate at Wal Mart, and maid. It is indeed heartbreaking to read about the thankless toil that is the life of this country's working poor, but to me this book is just a sob story. There is really no particular offering from the author as to the solution to this problem (besides the idle hinting to coworkers at Wal Mart to form a union) and hardly any intelligent analysis of what all this means to the person who is buying this book - who is almost undoubtedly not a member of America's "underclass" if they can spend money on a book like this one. In sum, I think that Ehrenreich's attempt at exposing working conditions in America is short-sighted and otherwise lackluster. I would refer readers to hailed classics like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in its place.
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Summary: Powerful and moving
Review: It's a quick read that will stay with you for a long time. For those who earn more than minimum wage, it is a call to political action to make this country a better, fairer place - or at least to remember that terribly hard work is not the key to success for many, many people.
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Summary: One of the BEST Books I¿ve Read
Review: I thought this book was absolutely fantastic. I found it an easy, five-hour read of 221 pages. The negative reviews of this book, I believe, are coming from two sorts of people. First are those who wish the book to be something it is not. This book is NOT attempt to be a serious, sociological study. It is only what its author purports it to be-the experiences of ONE reporter, making three reasonable attempts, in three vastly different locales, to live at a minimally acceptable standard on the salaries offered in low-wage service positions. Other criticisms of this book came from those who felt the author was a left-wing extremist, against the rich, advocating transfer payments from rich to poor. A few people ranted and raved, in their reviews, about what "solutions" she was advocating. I think these people didn't read very carefully. I did not find her advocating any solutions at ALL, only bringing up the dilemmas, and posing questions that we should ALL be posing. But to accuse the author of advocating things which she did not say, is akin to putting words in her mouth, by some people who literally feel threatened by anyone who asks the questions she poses! The most overwhelming feeling I got from reading her book was of HOW RICH I AM (and I'm an American living in a third-world country)! Anyone who is feeling the least bit sorry for themselves in this life should read this book, and they will IMMEDIATELY feel better. Mainly, just having good food to eat every day, and being able to pay for medical, or dental, care whenever I need it is a true luxury that we all forget about, as well as having a comfortable roof over my head. We are all guilty of taking these things so much for granted, when we have them. The most important conclusion the author draws in this book is that low-wage jobs are so far out-of-whack with the costs of housing, and that this is what is just killing people, and keeping them barely surviving. She shows how this situation has gotten worse in recent years. It is certainly true that most people in low-wage jobs are working two jobs to make ends meet. I know this from personal experience. My husband, a foreign immigrant to America for a time, worked in a hotel cleaning rooms. He was the ONLY person who did not go to a second job at the end of an 8-hour shift (as we fortunately didn't NEED him to do that). What this author, and most Americans, may not realize however, is that this is NOT just an AMERICAN problem. It is true that the more socialistic countries in Europe "distribute the wealth" to lower-income persons. But they are about the ONLY countries in the world that do (Canada may also). In MOST countries of the world, salaries are FAR out-of-whack with housing costs. And the disparity if FAR worse than in America. But there is one difference in America. America has a lot of laws making it illegal to have too many people living in an apartment, for example. You aren't allowed to have more people that two in an apartment for each bedroom. In third-world countries, these restrictions don't exist. So you could have ten people crowding into a one-bedroom apartment. And believe me, they sometimes do. It's the only way to make ends meet, for a lot of people. This is a problem that has been with us since the world began, and will continue. I don't have a solution. I am not rich. But I FELT SO RICH reading this book. This book will help any person to really freshly appreciate what they do have. I HIGHLY recommend it to EVERYONE.
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