Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
The best-known and most accessible introduction to Ehrenreich's investigative writing on labor, poverty, and inequality.
Author guide
Barbara Ehrenreich Books in Order
Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–2022) was an American author, journalist, political activist, and social critic. Trained as a cell biologist, she became a prominent writer on feminism, health care, class, labor, poverty, consumer culture, war, and social inequality. Her books combine investigative reporting, history, memoir, cultural criticism, and political analysis.
nonfictionsocial criticismfeminismpoliticslabormemoirjournalism
Catalog record updated .
Not sure where to begin?
Start with one of these
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class
A foundational examination of middle-class anxiety and American class identity.
Had I Known: Collected Essays
A broad career-spanning selection of her essays and journalism.
Outside the series
Bibliography by category
Novels (13)
- Long March, Short Spring: The Student Uprising at Home and Abroad
nonfiction · 1969
- The American Health Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics
nonfiction · 1970
- For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women
nonfiction · 1978
- The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment
nonfiction · 1983
- Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex
nonfiction · 1986
- The Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State
nonfiction · 1987
- Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class
nonfiction · 1989
- Kipper's Game
novel · 1993
- Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War
nonfiction · 1997
- Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
nonfiction · 2005
The bestselling author of "Nickel and Dimed" goes back undercover to enter the world of the white-collar unemployed. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for these newly disposable workers--and little security even for…
- Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
nonfiction · 2007
"Cultural historian Ehrenreich explores a human impulse that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.…
- Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
nonfiction · 2009
何でも「プラス思考」で本当にいいのか?「ポジティブ・シンキング」という病魔に冒され思考停止に陥っているアメリカ―ただひたすら前向きであることを求められる国の病根を鋭くえぐる。
- Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Our Illusion of Control
nonfiction · 2018
Offers insight into healthcare practices, identifying the cellular sources of aging and illness and revealing that aggressive treatments provide an illusion of control and survivability at the cost of life quality.
Nonfiction (2)
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
memoir · 2001
Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job―any job―can be the…
- Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
memoir · 2014
"In middle age, Ehrenreich came across the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence and set out to reconstruct that quest, which had taken her to the study of science and through a cataclysmic series of uncanny-or as she…
Essays and speeches (6)
- Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers
pamphlet · 1973
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses examines how women-led healing was delegitimized to make way for patriarchy, capitalism, and the emerging medical industry. As we watch another agonizing attempt to shift the future of healthcare in the…
- Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness
pamphlet · 1973
"From prescribing the "rest cure" to diagnosing hysteria, the medical profession has consistently treated women as weak and pathological. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English's concise history of the sexual politics of medical practices…
- The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed
essay-collection · 1990
- The Snarling Citizen: Essays
essay-collection · 1995
- This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation
essay-collection · 2008
Denounces the twenty-first-century's first political decade as the cruelest in memory, in a report that analyzes such modern challenges as political and corporate corruption, the widening economic gap, and a rise in extreme conservatism.
- Had I Known: Collected Essays
essay-collection · 2020
Frequently asked questions about Barbara Ehrenreich
Who was Barbara Ehrenreich?
Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–2022) was an American author, journalist, political activist, and social critic. Her work focused on labor, poverty, health care, feminism, and economic inequality.
Where was Barbara Ehrenreich born, and what did she study?
She was born in Butte, Montana, in 1941. She studied physics at Reed College and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University.
How did Barbara Ehrenreich become a writer and activist?
After graduate study, she worked in health-policy advocacy and became involved in the women’s health movement. She later left teaching to write full time, combining journalism with activism on health care, peace, women’s rights, and economic justice.
Sources: barbaraehrenreich.com (opens in a new tab)pbs.org (opens in a new tab)
What awards did Barbara Ehrenreich receive?
Her honors included the 1998 Humanist of the Year award from the American Humanist Association, the 2001 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Nonfiction, and the 2018 Erasmus Prize for investigative journalism.
Sources: americanhumanist.org (opens in a new tab)lannan.org (opens in a new tab)erasmusprijs.org (opens in a new tab)
What is Barbara Ehrenreich remembered for?
Ehrenreich is remembered as a pioneering investigative journalist who used immersion reporting to examine labor, poverty, class, health care, and gender inequality. Her public-interest legacy also includes co-founding the Economic Hardship Reporting Project in 2012.
Sources: erasmusprijs.org (opens in a new tab)lannan.org (opens in a new tab)