Rating: 
Summary: Should be required reading
Review: Ok, so what Ms. Ehrenriech has to say - that it's hard work to get by on a $6-7 hourly wage isn't surprising to anyone. Or at least I hope it isn't. Yet, I disagree with the reviewers who criticize her book for being either obvious, non-scientific, or condescending. The author herself points out that her experiment isn't even close to being real. That doesn't make it any less illustrative.Those of us that can afford to be here, shopping for books online, may be aware of the problems faced by those trying to live on hourly wages, but I don't think many of us REALLY "get it." This book helps with that. Especially by showing the multitude of catch-22's that these people have to deal with. Regardless of how one feels about issues such as minimum-wage or welfare benefits, I think everyone should read this book if only to have some more sympathy and give more kindness towards those people who are serving us our food, cleaning our houses, and otherwise trying to create nice places to eat, work, live, play, etc. In other words, when the waitress serving you makes a mistake or seems a little crabby, give her a break!!
Rating: 
Summary: The book is very funny, with a lot of heart.
Review: What most reviewers haven't mentioned is that the book is often laugh-out-loud funny, especially when she works at WalMart. The author, an independent writer and academic, takes a fresh and bemused look infantalizing rules that employees of corporate America take for granted. Her stories reminded me of david Sedaris', because they're so real and affecting.
Rating:
Summary: Very Thought-Provoking
Review: I'm nonplussed by some of the other readers's complaints about this book. I am a social scientist who is well-versed in research methods, and I don't feel that the author ever intended her book to be an exhaustive study of Life On Minimum Wage. She was forthright about the limitations of her study and her experience, and I thought she handled this aspect well. I also disagree with the criticism that "most people use minimum wage jobs as a mere stepping stone." I wish there were a cite for that. At any rate, frankly, I don't think the author was trying to capture their experience. She's talking about the people she worked with, like some people I know personally, who will always stay at this end of the wage scale. They're out there. Their struggles are important. Ehrenreich makes us think more about what their working lives are like. In my opinion, Ehrenreich's prose isn't engaging in terms of writing style. But what she wrote about--the small issues that minimum-wage workers deal with every day, which many professionals and middle-class people wouldn't ever have thought of--make this a very valuable and important book. I wholeheartedly recommend it as an eye-opener and something to think about. I do caution you, however, that the book will be more expensive than anticipated if, like I do, you change your tipping habits at restaurants & hotels.
Rating: 
Summary: good idea - poorly written
Review: Our bookclub did not like this book. Her first 2 experiences are an eye opener and some of her remarks are funny. But by her third experience it becomes boring. Nobody understood the need for her to explain her drug problems, which did not add any value to the book. She each time jumps in a job for a month and questions her colleagues. How can you tell what it is really like when you just pretend for a month I also felt her evaluation was adding more statistical numbers without giving a way forward. The conclusion of her book is that when you are poor life stinks and there is not much you can do to help it
Rating:
Summary: A Shoddy "Experiment"
Review: As a part-timer who lives comfotably (with self-paid health insurance and sattelite-dish television) off less money than even a minimum-wage full-timer, I was curious when I heard of this book. Nickel and Dimed is the story of a social critic with no family to support who sets out to live off low wage work in three different US cities (for about a month each) as a "scientific experiment" to determine whether she can make ends meet and comes to the conclusion that it can't be done. It seems this was her foregone conclusion all along. Ehrenreich provides no accounting for her finaces during her "experiment" which makes the book difficult to analyze from a finacial perspective, but the information she gives provides some clues to what happens.
Her housing costs are frequently exhorbitant. She spends much of her time in relatively high-cost transient housing and in one city, despite a promise to live in the cheapest available housing, she rejects a housing situation similar in price and style to mine (shared kitchen and bath) and takes a place that costs close to twice as much. Her other costs are also high combined to mine, but it's not easy to tell why with inccmplete information.
What the book does provide is an account of high-class culture shock upon entering the lower classes - and a well written one at that - but readers should be skeptical of her conclusions - there are many of us (especially singles) doing fine on low wages.
Rating:
Summary: dwelling in a place that is neither free nor democratic
Review: Barbara Ehrenreich begins with the premise that the U.S. has a large underclass that hasn't benefitted from the recent long term economic growth. Her apparent goal was to show the indiginities and the obstacles facing people who live in poverty--for it seems that many don't believe poverty is so bad, or, that such people only need pull themselves up by the bootstraps to improve their lot. Overall, she is successful in doing what she set out to do. The book clearly illustrates the problems ordinary people face in everyday life. This is very easy to read, and short. I disagree with those reviewers who find flaw in her methods; this is a journalistic piece, not a scientific study--and it works on that level. I also disagree with those who criticize her for being condescending or for not being "poor" enough. I found neither. It took some courage for her to do what she did; the one thing I don't think she adequately explains is why she underwent this experience. But it was worthwhile--at least for the reader. I'll be a bit more conscious now whenever I walk into a Wal Mart or stay at a motel.
Rating: 
Summary: Spectres at the Feast
Review: Unfortunately, Ms. Ehrenreich is no George Orwell. His Down and Out in Paris and London was a deeply sympathetic and brilliantly realized journey into the life of the working poor. The very important difference (apart from the fact that Orwell was an immensely more gifted writer than she) is that Orwell really was down and out when he wrote his book, not just pretending to be. And, despite the fact that he was one of the seminal authors of the twentieth century, he remained poor almost to he end of his life. Ms. Ehrenreich, as she reminds us again and again, is an upper middle class type, one the those ladies who lunches with editors. And, mind you, has a PhD, too. I got the sense that her oft-repeated status was hard won and of fairly recent vintage. Perhaps that's why the need to constantly re-state her separateness from the unfortunates she writes about. The lives of shamefully exploited workers is a subject worthy of deep and thoughtful analysis. There are no quick dilettanish solutions to so complex a subject. And this book has a quick shallow feel about it. The last two chapters--no doubt tacked on in an attempt to lend some scholarly credence--are listless harangues for yet more of the same failed government imposed socio-economic policies of the late 20th century, policies of such deliberate evil (in the guise of benign do-gooding) they have resulted in the wage stagnation workers today are forced to live with. Ms. Ehrenreich herself states that workers now earn little more than they did in 1973. The question which is never
answered truthfully or even addressed is why. Nickel and Dimed is little more than simple-minded melodramatic muckraking, which pits various groups against each other, solves nothing and further exploits the very people it claims to be defending. Read it and see for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: I have seen perfection...
Review: The novel Nickel and Dimed provides a spectacular comprehensive analysis of the lower class, blue collar world that so many of us spend our lives trying to turn away from. After anyone is finished reading Barbra Ehernreich's masterpiece, you will never feel the same about leaving meager tips, eating in bed just because you're in a hotel or re-shuffling the clothesrack at your local retailer. Although clever and fun to read, the facts that line the pages are interesting as well. One will thank their religious beleifs after the book is through as it offers insight to the utter ignorance of the upper class toward their fellow man. At the turn of every page, you will be left thinking, "that's true", of course reffering to the numerous facts and stories pumped into the novel (which I really like to think of as a guide). The conversational tone in which Ehernreich sets the book works well too, as it makes it seem as though the reader was interviewing the author, hence putting one in the position of every job guru looking for perspective workers. Nickel and Dimed is filled with charming laughs as well as a very serious message about those who barely make ends meet. Truly a five star piece and one that should be enjoyed by all.
Rating:
Summary: Minimum Wage Meets the Road of Life
Review: For the sake of research, albeit empirical, Barbara Ehrenreich leaves her comfortable writer's life near Key West, Florida, and goes undercover as a waitress, a motel maid, a residential cleaning woman, a nursing home dietician and a Wal-Mart clerk. Living alone with no children or other dependents, Ehrenreich attempts to make ends meet in three different communities in Florida, Maine and Minnesota. She failed--miserably. Even for a family of one, minimum wage just doesn't bring home the bacon in 21st century America. Apart from the econonomic experiment, I found the antecdotes of her work experiences quite fascinating. Following her new careers was like being the proverbial fly on the wall. If you think of America's working poor in stereotypical fashion, Nickel and Dimed will disabuse you of many falsehoods. Don't think it's all grim reading, however. You'll discover a number of stories to howl over. Enjoy the read. Let it enlighten you and enlarge your understanding of a segment of American society that should not be ignored.
Rating:
Summary: Could have been much more effective
Review: This book could have been much more effective if the author had not set herself up for failure by choosing the most expensive possible locations for her experiments. Two tourist communities and a major city experiencing a housing shortage are not at all representative of the housing or job market nationwide. If I were a single person searching for a place to live, knowing that my prospects were limited to low-wage jobs, I would go where the cost of living was as cheap as possible, ie, small to middling towns in the middle of the country, possibly ones with a college or university to create a demand for cheap student-type housing. Even here in Raleigh/Durham, which has been considered a fairly expensive place to live for the past few years due to the tech boom, a search at Rent.net for apartment complexes with units renting for under $600/month produced 96 results! The author offhandedly addresses this by (rather defensively) stating that she has no intention of running her experiments in "darkest Idaho or Louisiana". Is is because she fears she might actually be able to make ends meet in a small town, thus invalidating her thesis? Or is it because she's always wanted to visit Key West, Maine, and Minneapolis, and decided on those places (utterly illogical choices in view of the role she's attemping to play) to be able to do some sightseeing before and after her periods of research? I agree with other reviewers who criticized her "lone wolf" approach. A single person who has no particular job skills, all things being equal, is going to tend to move somewhere where he or she has some kind of support network: family, friends, church, etc. All in all, a clearer and more sympathetic picture of the working poor would have emerged if the author had just interviewed the people whose lifestyles she attempted unsuccessfully to emulate. Living alone in a hotel, with the option of going back to her comfortable middle-class existence at any point, she captures none of the suffering experienced by people who really are living on minimum wage: living in a crowded apartment with possibly unpleasant roommates while trying to raise children, skipping meals due to financial constraints, enduring chronic pain due to an inability to afford medical care.
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