Rating: 
Summary: Dreadful
Review: I would not recommend this book to anyone. She was oddly condescending to the people she worked with and her research methods were sloppy. She made the book sound like it was this scientific experiment but it wasn't. For those of you who are not familiar with the book, she goes undercover to work in low-wage jobs to see if anyone can really live on it. She only works in the jobs for a month so you wonder how much she really learned and she always had the option of leaving and returning to her "real life" which, none of these other women she worked along sides did.It was poorly written too, for someone who boasts that she writes for the New York Times occasionally.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing new learned
Review: I read this book hoping to learn more about this epidemic of the working poor, but did not come out enlightened. It was interesting to read the author's actual experiences living the way millions of Americans live. However, her experience was biased and just a sampling of what it is really like. The author did not have to go "undercover" to tell us that it really stinks to live this way. Her evalution was poor on the fact that, again, did not give the reader much more to ponder. She did give us some numbers to support her obvious claims, but I was disappointed with this aspect of the book.If you are not looking for an in-depth investagative piece on this topic, then you will enjoy it for what it is worth: a bunch of little stories about working minimun wage jobs.
Rating:
Summary: Pretending to be poor
Review: In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich tells the story of several months that she spent trying to enter the work force as an unskilled middle-aged woman who had been a homemaker. I was very interested in this book when I first heard about it, but the book itself was disappointing. Ehreneich found that she couldn't survive on the wages that she was paid without sinking to places such as homeless shelters for awhile, and gave up the experiment. I felt that there was sort of a patronizing attitude about the whole book-- a well-educated white woman goes and pretends to be poor for awhile, then comes back and tells us all about how awful it was.
I can't imagine why this book's findings, that low paid jobs are physically demanding, boring, and offer little in the way of job advancement, would be surprising to anyone who's not blind, but perhaps most people who read books like this haven't had low wage jobs while growing up. I was also surprised at how savagely certain groups are treated-- fat people, school teachers, people who pay household workers are all attacked for various reasons. The only folks who seem to be ok are some members of the working poor. Everyone else is seen as worthy of scorn. It doesn't take long to read the book. It's not particularly intellectually challenging, but there are still a lot of other books out there that I think are more worthy of your time.
Rating: 
Summary: More, please.
Review: Ehrenreich has never disappointed me; but I feel this book, though very good, could have been better.
For one thing, I found myself wanting to know more about the personal circumstances of her co-workers. Very few talked about their dreams or aspirations - certainly nobody mentioned a 'dream job'. I would have liked to hear more about what people consider their options (especially in light of all the books exhorting us to 'chase our dreams' and "find the perfect job"). What I found most interesting, apart from the hard (in both senses of the word) economic facts, was the attitude of the workers toward their jobs: why they don't unionise, why in a tight labour market people can feel beholden to their miserly employers. Though I wanted, again, to know more, I think Ehrenreich did fill in quite a bit of detail on the insulting procedures and general hassle that poor people endure if they wish to improve their circumstances, either via a new job or via social services. I also wanted to know more about "the big picture", including the employers. It would have been useful, for instance, to know how much Wal-Mart pays its middle staff and top executives.
The book was certainly very honest - Ehrenreich did not edit out some of the reactions which I'm sure she knows don't show her in a good light. Like the fact that as a PH D - she mentions her title more than once - she expected to do very well (better than the uneducated poor, is the implication) in everything. But her pride in doing well in her unexpectedly challenging jobs is rather touching....
Rating:
Summary: Good But Left Leaning
Review: Nickel And Dimed is a witty, well-written exposure of the trials and tribulations of attempting to live on a minimum wage job. I found the three middle chapters, which describe her life in poverty, to be informative and entertaining. She gives a portrait of the people who live in poverty and their difficulties and their (few) rewards. Or more accurately she gives a portrait of what it is like for an upper class, left leaning, middle aged, white woman to visit the lower class. Which brings me to the deficiencies of the book. Ms. Ehrenreich starts her trek with the assumption that the minimum wage is unfair. She references several studies that support her assumption, but none that refute it. Her basic message is that the minimum wage is insufficient to live on. She ignores that most people use minimum wage, entry level positions as a stepping stone to better paying jobs; that most people do not attempt to live on a minimum wage job for their entire life. And yet she almost succeeds in living on her minimum wage jobs. She fails due to the high rents she must pay. But here she biases her study. She must live alone, though most people do not. Sharing a place with friends or family would lower the costs. She requires transient housing since her "visit" to the lower class will only be for a month. Transient housing is much more expensive than long-term housing. Finally she searches for the housing via advertisements. Good, inexpensive, low-cost housing has waiting lists and rarely advertises. She selected the most expensive way for a poor person to live and then complains about the cost. Now that she is ensconced back in her upper class life style, one wonders if she complains about the high cost of flying on the Concorde. (On the other hand not all her criticism are wrong.) I found other problems, but this is a review not a rebuttal. To summarize, I recommend the book. For socialists the entire book is informative and enjoyable. Libertarians should avoid the last chapter.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps a bit too glib, but otherwise a needed work
Review: A book like this has been depserately needed to counter those who have smugly stated that poverty no longer exists in America, or that the economic boom of the Nineties meant prosperity for all. Ehrenreich's muckraking work of going undercover in various lowpaying jobs (a waitress in Key West, a cleaning woman in Portland, Maine, and a Wal-Mart worker in Minneapolis) shows the misery of low paying work and how impossible it is to live decently at minimum wages. There's a breeziness to the book that is often very funny (her anger at the smug and wealthy houseowners she cleans for in maine is hilarious), but sometimes the breathless prose seems to go by so quickly that the book doesn't take enough time to stop and breathe and make its important points.
Rating: 
Summary: Primer for the Management Set
Review: I've often stated that upper management in corporations should live on the income of their average employee, and also keep their schedule for a month, (day care, shopping, homework etc.)to help them remember what the real world is like. This book is a primer for the management team. It is an eye opener that shows it is almost impossible to break out of the cycle, without a strong support system.
Rating: 
Summary: A good idea not well done
Review: I wanted to read the book from the time I saw the cover -- a good premise and a unique (these days) approach to the matter. The book is indeed a good quick read -- if you skip the preachy Evaluation part. The story that is told, though, belongs to the author and her adventures -- not that of the people she works with and for. The other folks in the story are not well-developed and come across as one-dimensional or as caricatures. If you're looking for insight into a way of life that you didn't have to bear by some good fortune, you'll have to go elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Eye-opener & Heartbreaker
Review: Ms. Ehrenreich opened my eyes and broke my heart. Her report is not only insightful, but entertaining. The writing is wonderful: filled with humor and a lot of sarcasm. In the end, though, she will lift your respect for humanity, and perhaps your opinion of the "working class". You will never look at cleaning franchises the same way. Be prepared to become a better tipper, and maybe an activist for low-income housing.
Rating:
Summary: Genuine understanding?
Review: I greatly enjoyed B.Ehrenreich's "Nickel and dimed.": 5 stars, 4 for the book, and 1 for actually joining America's "working poor" by working as a maid, a waitress, for Wal-Mart, etc. and being (mostly) successful at it. If you want to know what that world is like, buy two copies, and give one to a friend. It took me a while to understand what troubled me about the book. Of couse, it is part a report of personal experience, part reportage or journalism, and part social or sociological commentary. Politics intervene. This is a hard to mix to bring off with panache, and some readers may object to the footnotes and ideological underpinnings. However, upon reflection, I felt B. E. handled this aspect honourably. My mind then turned to others who have assumed alternative identities or donned disguises in order to experience, first hand, what it is like to belong to, or live as, some member of a less priviledged class. (Going "up" is unfortunately very difficult to puill off..). I remembered "Black like me" by J. H. Griffin (a white man who painted himself black more than 40 years ago), and most particularly a book in French by a Turkish journalist who posed as an illegal immigrant trying to enter Switzerland. The situations are of course very different to the one E. B. put herself in. Nevertheless, the two other books mentioned are more informative, more interesting and illuminate our human condition and the world we live in better. Both books can be read as a homage to the group the authors entered. B. E. remains throughout a part time visitor with a journalistic view point - heartfelt participation or identification are not on the agenda, and so the real horror -- as well, no doubt, as the comradeship, comedy, fun, etc. -- of living in this world are not well portrayed. It follows that her analysis falls a bit flat and genuine understanding (whatever that is!) doesn't emerge. But as B. E. explicitly admits the limitations of her approach, 5 stars.
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