Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them, inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. "Nickel and Dimed" reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety and surprising generosity–a land of "big box" stores, fast food and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Acclaimed for its insight, humor and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.
This book is most suitable for adults and young adults.
Books Like Nickel And Dimed
The Working Poor: Invisible In America
Shipler, David K.
Shipler is informed and impassioned about the plight of the surprisingly diverse and numerous Americans who work but still walk the official poverty line. This conundrum is complex and rife with interlocking problems, including dead-end jobs that offer little or no healthcare benefits and depressing home and workplace environments.
The Betrayal Of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans And Their Families
Shulman, Beth
Following in the footsteps of Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling "Nickel and Dimed," Shulman spent several years traveling across the country talking to those living on low wages. In writing "The Betrayal of Work, " she provides the fullest portrait of America's working poor.
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side Of The All-American Meal
Schlosser, Eric
Schlosser's incisive history of the development of American fast food indicts the industry for some shocking crimes against humanity, including systematically destroying the American diet and landscape, and undermining our values and our economy. The first part of the book details the postwar ascendance of fast food from Southern California, assessing the impact on people in the West in general. The second half looks at the product itself: where it is manufactured (in a handful of enormous factories), what goes into it (chemicals, feces) and who is responsible (monopolistic corporate executives).
Books With A Different Viewpoint
Danger In The Comfort Zone: From Boardroom To Mailroom--How To Break The Entitlement Habit That's Killing American Business
Bardwick, Judith M
Since the original publication of this important and controversial book, it has stirred up business thinkers everywhere. Now the landmark work has been updated and expanded (with five all-new chapters) to meet today's continuing challenges to the nation's productivity and morale. "This book offers timely solutions to America's national crisis."
The Wal-Mart Decade: How A Generation Of Leaders Turned Sam Walton's Legacy Into The World's Number One Company
Slater, Robert
Slater, a highly respected business journalist and author, was granted unprecedented access to the company while writing "The Wal-Mart Decade." He takes readers deep into the inner circle, where the big decisions are made about strategy and operations.
No-Collar : The Humane Workplace And Its Hidden Costs
Ross, Andrew
No-Collar is the first book to place the much-feted New Economy workplace in the context of industrial history and the struggle to win a humane work environment. From Horatio Alger to the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Americans have extolled the virtues of hard work as a source of meaning and identity as well as livelihood.
Altering Fate : Why The Past Does Not Predict The Future
Lewis, Michael
This provocative book persuasively argues that childhood experiences neither determine who we later become nor limit what we can do. What enables us to survive -- and sets us free from our pasts -- is our adaptability to change, shaped by the uniquely human attributes of consciousness, will, and desire.
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