I hope that with the success of her acid dipped expose of what's really going on in the marketplace of the working poor( Nickel and Dimed) all of Barbara Ehrenreich's books will be back in print because she is a species of writer on the verge of extinction. Unabashedly pro union and anti compassionate conservatism and faith based charity and decidedly not glamorous in her pursuit of topics and people to interview she does the grind work of looking statistics in the eye and debunking some of our more vigorously pandered myths. This volume in particular does a fantastic job in holding a mirror up to the paranoias and greed of the middle class who suspects every contrarian to be after what they have accrued and fenced in and considers its possessions and spouses( is that one category or two?) its natural born right as long as the community is drawn with an infantile crayon and nobody knows who works the sewers.
It illustrates a society where everyone wants to purchase their own fringes of good taste, the rich beg more than the poor because they can always afford the bail for atonement and where every transgression spawns a fresh bombardment of analysts trying to mine the national soul, subtlety is never profitable medicine and the chosen few worry about the calories in walnut raspberry dressing. In the honored tradition of Studs Terkel Ms Ehrenreich points out that there is one airwave for the brash winners, the losers of all stripes remain unseen unless they are truly interesting criminals but the large portion of the silent middle class is stuck in a morass of anger, fear and wall building to leave everybody out who can't be labelled with a corporate golf pass, a church membership or a Neiman Marcus preferred customer I.D. The result is that they have mortgaged about every particle of their humanity to one vendor or another.

Right on the money sad but true.Well researched and documented. Should make people think about the world we are creating. It's too bad the people who won't read this book are the ones that should. We take too much and give too little.

Some sociology texts, particularly those dealing with class issues, can be pretty boring to read but this book holds your attention beginning to end. I highly recommend it. Check out my used copy available for sale!

Collaboratively compiled and edited by Randy Albelda (Economics, University of Massachusetts) and Ann Withorn (Social Policy, University of Massachusetts), Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty, And Beyond is a scholarly selection of impressive essays by a variety of learned authors on topics relating to American welfare policy. From the effects of globalization on the current system, to fallacies of welfare-to-work policies, to issues of the rights of women and people of color, Lost Ground covers a very wide area of controversial issues often conveniently ignored by today's too-eager politics. Lost Ground is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to academic reference collections and reading lists in the area of American social policy in general, and welfare reform in particular.

The downside of welfare reforn is well documented in this new anthology. Moreover, welfare issues are analyzed in the context of broad political shifts, including globalization, the end of the family wage, the sexual revolution, and rise of black liberation, feminism, and multiculturalism.

A deeply felt and extensively documented look at the lives and times of these men in Weimar Germany. The author looks unflinching at the Freikorps men, precursors of the Nazis, with all that they have very different from most of us today--and all they have that is all too common with us today. But here I am stressing the conclusion. The point is, he honestly gets his conclusions out of huge amounts of documentation on everyday life. These men represent an extreme, of course, but their motives and life-conditions were very close to many people in the Weimar Republic. It is a great book on that period, which also relates that time to our own.

Examines fascism as a Reichian phenomenon gone awry - the fascist male experiences ego-dissolution in early infancy, finds it threatening, and so builds for himself a "body armor" within which are contained such "female" traits and emotions (unaknowledged) as weakness, fear, guilt, etc. Through repetitive conditioning and a brutal pedagogy, these negative, shadowy perceptions are then projected outward onto the despised classes of scoiety and made to represent the chaotic forces of the collective cultural unconscious. Like Adorno said, "fascism is psychoanalysis in reverse."

An absolutely fascinating unvarnished first hand look at one of the premier institutions of medicine. Recommended reading to all who are in medicine or contemplating a career in the medical field. Clearly portrays those whom are truly devoted to the CARING of the sick and also clearly and dramatically demonstrates the disparity in our health care system. Most importantly, Ms. Lewis provides a look at our health care system from EVERYONE involved- Housekeepers, patients, nurses aides, all the way to the executives.

This book is interesting since it gives histroical perspective of evolution of certain beleifs about women which are unfortunately still present. However, I was hoping for a book which would go into more detail on different treeatment of women by medical community. It is still too common that for example endometriosis sufferer in extreme pain visits a gyn only to be told that it is all in her head. Episiotomies are still performed without consent even against woman's explicit wishes with no medical justification, which makes it unique medical procedure. Also, some historical facts are oversimplified and book is a bit biased. As a woman and as a scientist, I could not consider this book objective. I do research in male dominated field, and of course I have encountered problems due to being a woman. But nevertheless when I read some (not all) feminist literature I often wonder what do these women want. It seems to me that they are after not equal rights but special treatment.

I am fascinated by "For her own good". I had heard of some outrageous "treatments" prescribed to women in the past, but this book gives a broader view of the social and economic movements of the past 150 years and how they affected women. I had never imagined that science would betray women, becoming an instrument of their subordination! I was revolted by the arrogance and obtusity of some "experts" as portrayed in this book. As a college student, how could I not be outraged by reading that "she [woman] has a head almost too small for intellect but just big enough for love" (from a 1849 obstetrics text) ???

One cannot help wondering, after reading this book, whether women are finally free to shape their own destiny and role in society. It would be great, indeed, to see an updated edition of this excellent book.

I read For Her Own Good in college but this book still sticks with me. It's funny, because I haven't gone back to reread it. Yet the historical perspectives it had given me has allowed me to be more thoughtfully critical of the articles I read now and the decisions I make with my own health.

I am surprised with the one reviewer who is so dismissive. I wonder if "his" is a case of Flat-Earth syndrome or paranoia. Certainly this book has a point of view and is not neutral, but the facts are valid. Misperceptions as to women's health existed in the past, and perceptions are still evolving to best of our collective abilities.

I found this book fun and fabulous. Fun because history can be surprisingly shocking. And fabulous because the viceral reaction I had to it and how it has sharpened my awareness of what is said or believed in the name or science.

The title is catchy enough. I expected lots of facts and figures in tables and graphs that would illustrate international trade and finance. Was I surprised. There are facts and figures there, even pictures and cartoons. But the authors see the world differently. "The problem..." we are told, "...is not so much that the world is so tightly linked now...but that the links converge in such a small number of hands." The hands they're refering to belong to corporate executives and billionaires. An ongoing theme throughout the book is the old cliche' that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
One thing different about the current process of globalization, the authors claim, "is that a number of poorer countries, led by China and Mexico, now have the infrastructure to house practically any industrial or service operation...." What's wrong with that? They object that "...Ford, Boeing, and other global corporations are now setting up state-of-the-art manufacturing plants in countries where wages and other costs are kept extremely low through repression." We can all agree that repression is a bad thing. We may differ on where it's happening. For instance, according to the index of economic freedom constructed by the Heritage Foundation (what the authors call a "corporate think tank") and the Wall Street Journal, China is "mostly unfree" (but not "repressed") and Mexico is "mostly free." "Repressed" countries include Zimbabwe, Iran, Cuba, Iraq, and North Korea. Corporate capitalism does not appear to be causing problems in those countries by any stretch of the imagination. Vietnam is among the repressed, but it's difficult to see how workers who produce sneakers for the Nike company would be better off if Nike weren't there.
Much of the book is devoted to criticizing "globalization claims." Although some free traders will justifiably dismiss this criticism, in my view the authors' attacks will work to strenghthen the case for free trade. Put differently, any economist who wants practice defending free trade can find it reading this book. Warning: the bile may rise in you.
To their credit the authors provide an abundance of endnotes to support their case. They offer some criticism a free trader would appreciate. For example they object to export subsidies and IMF bailouts of banks with troubled loans to developing countries. They even profess to reject protectionism. However the alternative they recommend, "fair trade," is better described as "managed trade."
The authors minimize the role of consumers in the process of globalization. Corporations would not achieve their goals if consumers weren't buying their products. The authors also fail to recognize the importance of property rights in economic development. If the governments of poor countries established and protected property rights, the people would get wealthier. Given that these authors reject international trade and investment as a cause of our prosperity and cannot tolerate disparities of wealth, they'll always remain idealists with axes to grind.

That is the first book on economics I read that does not necessarily employ a lot of incomprehensible terminology. Moreover, it is written for the average reader who wants to get a "first introduction" into the topic. It is definitely not written for people who search any detailed infomation. This book explains perfectly the basic correlations in today's global economy.

A group in our high school had been planning a symposium on the global economy when our advisor suggested that we take a look at this book. "Field Guide" offers a clear, concise description of many of the global issues that confront citizens of both the industrialized and unindustrialized nations. To its credit, it offers both the pros and cons of many of the issues it discusses and offers a resource list for others to get involved. I encourage anyone interested global politics or economics to read this book, share it with a friend, and get involved!

I bought this book of essays while I was spending a lonely summer in Paris (I don't travel well), and it helped keep me very amused through a few days of repeated browsing.

Ehrenreich is a brilliant leftist critic of our complacent bourgeois culture. She's also ... funny and sharp. She doesn't mess around with intellecutal posturing but cuts right to the chase with nasty barbed comments on everyday events. She obviously cares a lot about America and Americans, and her essays are an attempt to brink to light the crimes going on all around us.

These essays cover everything from Feminism and infidelity to Paula Jones (remember her) to drug legalization.

I give the book only 4 stars because wonderful writer as she is, the essays tend to be a bit on the short side and a little dated by the passing of time. (Time does that, dates things, you know.)

Ralph Nader brought up many important issues in this year's presidential race. Many of these are seen throughout the writings in this book and it is apparent that the problems he talks about are not recent, nor are they going to go away without any massive efforts.

Nader's style is a little dry and difficult to read at times, but the points he brings up (especially in the sections on the presidency, democracy, and grassroots organizing) are vital to the progressive movement. His sections on tort reform and law practice are a little more technical and are probably best understood by those in the field.

Nader has stood by his convictions from the time he started fighting GM to today. This is an excellent book that traces his numerous crusades throughout the decades and gives a boost to the future.

I haven't even finished the book yet and I still came on the computer for the sole purpose of writing this review. Ralph Nader's book directly informed and educated me on corporate welfare and abuse and much much more. I feel empowered from reading it and I now know who I would vote for in a future election. When I got into an argument with an ignorant co-worker about the accomplishments of Nader, I told him about Ralph's efforts to make cars, water, and air safer, his battle against corporate abuses, and his various organizations. My co-worker still unfairly chastised him, with unsubstantiated claims. My hands were literally shaking with fury that anyone could deny the work of this hero for the citizens, taxpayers, workers, stockholders and consumers- THE PEOPLE.

It's deplorable--inexcusable--that in a country where free exchange of ideas is supposedly valued Americans were not given the chance to hear one of the nation's true heroes talk about issues that really matter to most people.

By locking Ralph Nader out of the election debates, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) may have served the corporate underwriters of the event--companies like AT&T and Anheuser-Busch--but this private organization performed a terrible disservice to the American people. Not only was Nader left out of the debates, he was actually *kicked* out of the debate hall, despite having a legitimate ticket to attend as an audience member! Makes you wonder what the major parties are afraid of, doesn't it?

Fortunately, we have a fine collection of Nader's essays in this book that does a great job of presenting the progressive, compassionate thinking that defines this presidential candidate and makes him stand apart from the political pretenders who can't even make the debates into lively televised spectacle, that's how much their policies mirror one another's.

Mr. Nader is the real deal. A man of energy and action, a man of principle and determination. A true hero whose decades of committed public service will stand as testimony to his lofty, truly democratic ideals long after Bush/Gore have been forgotten.

Read this book, endorse this great man. .

Barbara Ehrenreich's theory that war is a reenactment of man's transition from prey to predator is what she attempts to prove in her essay, Blood Rites: The Origins and History of the Passions of War. Ehrenreich is not only an excellent writer and researcher, she is also an original thinker. The Hunter theory she presents shows the idea that man was a powerful hunter since the beginning of his time on this world. Ehrenreich disproves this theory by showing how frail man must have really been compared to the vicious predator beasts that roamed the earth at that time. Another concept is that men are natural born killers which she proves to be untrue by giving examples of the way men must undergo transformations using drills, drugs or rituals before they consider themselves soldiers.The way she presents the proof to her theory, using an extensive compilation of previous theories and studies to compare and contrast against her own, really changed my views on war and its origin. I felt the most outstanding part of the book were chapters six and seven which show how human cultures general mentality toward women has completely reversed itself. There were once many ferocious female war deities that many men worshipped, today women have been "tamed" into nurturing, life-giving, or sensual creatures. This showed me that war is a cultural phenomenon but even so we could never control it because culture twists and transforms in a way that we cannot change.

"...To acknowledge that nationalism is itself a kind of religion would be to concede that all that is 'modern' is not necessarily 'progressive' or 'rational': that history can sometimes take us 'backward', toward what we have come to see as the archaic and primitive."
Barbara Ehrenreich, BLOOD RITES
From Chapter Thirteen, "Three Cases of War Worship" ....

If we can accept the fact that the latest evolutionary stage of war has been completed--from multi-national/mechanical (1914 to 1945) to Cold/covert/technological (1946 to 1989), to terrorist/"asymmetrical" (today, in the 21st century)--we can see that this book easily surpasses anything written in the last decade for the title of Most Important. More than the ocean of tomes recently produced on the psychology of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban (and the Middle East as a whole), or those depicting the consequences of biological and chemical weaponry on American soil, Barbara Ehrenreich has, with this book, surpassed the innovative, seminal and profoundly contraversial scholarship of anthropology, psychology and political science of the past thirty years.

BLOOD RITES: ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF THE PASSIONS OF WAR is one of the greatest, most frightfully illuminating books I've ever read. In the context of unified-field, "theory of everything" books on culture and the human psyche--the holistic/spherical direction into which Western consciousness seems to be finally heading--this book ranks with work like the 19th century Godfrey Higgins' ANACALYPSIS, scientific mythographer Alan Alford's WHEN THE GODS CAME DOWN, Camile Paglia's SEXUAL PERSONAE, linguist Kuhn's THEORY OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS and CHANGES OF MIND by philsopher/psychologist Dr. Jenny Wade. I believed few works in this new discpline of evolutionary psychology/anthropology could ever come close to the impact of THE IMPERIAL ANIMAL by Tiger and Fox. Ehrenreich, however, with BLOOD RITES, via encapsulating all of their discoveries within an even newer and more all-encompassing paradigm, surpasses it with a quantum leap.

Ehrenreich's idea is that the primal fear of predation of Paleolithic man has driven much of what we know as the genesis of culture, from religion to war. Early man's very real fear of being eaten alive in the jungle by much physically stronger animals, back when early human kind/hominids didn't leave willingly but was forced out of the trees by climatic changes in the Savannahs of central Africa--is the generative force behind the primal rituals of the blood. These rituals--blood rites--symbolize the eventual supremacy over the man-eating animals via man learning to hunt even better, and subsequently successfully fight for their survival as a species. In other words, they symbolize the ultimate transformation of the jungle: prey to predator. These rituals, with their corresponding symbol meaning, are the DNA of culture itself.

The reenactment of this rite in every human community--the transformational ritual that told the story of mankind's most humble and frightened beginnings--in turn created much of society as it exists even today; from the characteristics of ancient culture's many gods and the corresponding behavioral architecture of ancient religions...to the shape and purpose of modern day war.

How Ehrenreich proves her point will change the way you look at everything, including many other historically intellectuals and the actual validity of their ideas, regardless of how foundational to our culture they may seem. Particularly because so many influential thinkers and philosophers of the past three centuries have consciously and unconsciously based their theories of human existence on a now defunct paradigm: the unvanquished hunter-gatherer man of Neolithic times as the beginning of human civilization and thought. Ehrenreich reveals this foundational idea to be a myth of its own. *That alone*, when contemplating its implications, will change the way you look at literally everything--especially the true horror that is war.

This is a book to be experienced, moreso than simply read. Those whose hearts question obvious things, like why the irrationality of war continuously re-demands supremacy over our lives, will have many questions answered by this work. But for those whose questions go deeper...deeper into the intellectual architecture of Western man and its place in the human psyche...for those who understand, who feel, but lack the words to explain the feeling of seeing an ignored pink polka-dotted elephant on the coffee table of every celebrated thinker of the past--from Descartes to Hobbes to Rouseau to Darwin to Nietzsche to Freud to feminist Susan Faludi...for those who question it all, but even the fairly current answers to so much of why culture is what it is only yields more questions, this book will change you in ways that could not be predicted. It is books like these for which Kuhn's term *paradigm shift* was created.

And instead of like a college textbook, its 250-odd pages read like a novel. She is a brilliant intellectual and masterful storyteller herself, rolled into one.

The influence this book will have on everything from child psychology to international politics to art will assert itself for many generations to come. In these times (it was first reviewed by the New York Times four years before the September 11th Tragedy), every American should read it.

Being a Sociology major I found Barbara Ehrenreich's study of the Origins of war most interesting. For the first time, I have found a book that tries to answer the question why do we continue to have wars and what important part of our culture's development do they continue to play? The idea of prey and preditor still exists. The ideas of war being religious and part of the feeling of nationalism helped to make sense of something I could never understand. I have lent out my copy to many. Others I know have bought a copy on my recommendation. It leads to many interesting discussions of war. I have even lent it to a person who spent much of his time in the military. I think it provides food for thought whether you're a militant or pacifist.

"Nickel and Dimed" might have been an informative study of the living and working conditions of low-wage workers, something like a modern version of "The Road to Wigan Pier". Although Orwell's book was an exercise in proving his preconceptions, he was careful and observant in describing the horrific living and working conditions of depression-era coal miners. "Nickel and Dimed" is, in contrast, primarily an inventory of the author's prejudices, incompetence, condescension, and petty hatreds. A few bits of interesting (though not particularly novel) statistical information on the working poor sneak in through the footnotes, but otherwise "Nickel and Dimed" is merely a monumental exercise in solipsism. Dr Ehrenreich's topic is her own limited experience; she only occasionally writes about her coworkers and it is done in terms of breakroom gossip and personal speculations. The pages in between are filled with an angry prima donna's disdain for paid labor, contempt for social inferiors, loathing of wealthier people, and respect for herself alone (and perhaps Lewis Lapham).

Taken as a memoir the book might still have been worthwhile, but it is unfortunately composed in the snide voice of a narcissistic freshman who seeks to demonstrate superior humor through easy sarcasm and superior morality with easier sanctimony. It is awfully tiring. The conclusive chapter, in which I hoped might redeem the book with some valuable insight, starts with a charitable self-evaluation, moves on to a promising discussion of the immense problem of rent inflation, but returns to admittedly thin musings on her coworkers' mindsets drawn primarily from her own preconceptions and her extremely brief life as a wage slave. The class warrior rhetoric is a little hard to take seriously from a narrator who openly loathes the "owner class" two chapters before reporting a $20000 tax "subsidy" from her mortgage deduction. (It is unclear to this renter whether the figure refers to the amount of income deduction or actual tax savings, but either way it sounds like an ownership situation.)

"Nickel and Dimed" was both frustrating and remarkably disappointing. I was hoping to read an honest and illuminating study of the working poor, but instead I got a snarky adolescent memoir which became increasingly boring by the page. For some insight into low-wage workers, I strongly suspect that books like Studs Terkel's "Working" and Alison Owings's "Hey Waitress!" are far more lucid and enlightening. If the "undercover journalist" element is what you're after, try Ted Conover's "Newjack".

No subject matter seems to get people as excited blathering
nonsense as income inequality, low wage worker and "what's wrong",
i.e. the good old rich versus poor debate. This book is a good
book to read, in particular given the reviews you see above.
I'll explain why and then give my brief review.

You know people have an agenda reviewing when they spend more
time trying to refute what the author says or paint the author's
experience in a bad light that talking of what the book is about.
So you'll have to read the book to see why some of the reviews
are actually quite biased and have an agenda (easy to spot
in this case).

The book is about an experiment: can a person live on minimum-wage in America during the 1998-2000 economic boom
in a self-sustaining manner? The author, a writer in normal
life, decides to try the experiment and sets some reasonable
rules. She doesn't stick with them at every single moment, but one can
see the reasons for it (although it does distort the experiment
from a strictly scientific view). She finds, not surprisingly,
that if you are alone and try to have a place to yourself,
you can not survive on minimum-wage. The author could have
tried to share living space, but since she was also trying to see if all
the welfare-mothers being booted of welfare could survive,
and since many working folks have children, the fact that she
chose to have a place to herself would balance for the costs
she did not have to pay for: child health care, school and/or
daycare, and feeding the kid (and losing time taking care of
him/her and not sleeping).

The book is well written. The language is clear and straight
forward. The author is a bit bitter and does complain a lot
about the structure of the situation she is in and does indulge
in ranting against the rich folks (and their houses) that she
has to clean in one episode. But the relevant thing this book
shows is how the whole problem is structural: almost any person,
regardless of who they are, will likely develop the attitude
she has given the way the social system is set up and
rules and attitudes that prevail, all of them "rational"
and easy to understand (sadly).

I "enjoyed" reading this book: one sees low-wage service labor
all around, but does one know what it is really like? Where
do these folks live? What to they eat? Can they afford to live
alone? Or do they have to shack up with lots of other folks
in dirty places essentially in perptuity (yes)?

It is a book that puts the "prosperity" of the 90s into
perspective, one that anyone not making the big bucks in the
internet stuff or wall street knows about first hand. Despite
solid economic growth, inequality in wealth and income has increased in the last 30 years, wages haven't budged much since 1970, and folks have to work much harder and for longer hours (and both spouses) just to have more or less the same level of living. Unless you're in the top 10% of the wealth bracket: then you've been doing just fine. This is a structural problem and
the book talks about it in a simple, everyday, nose to the
grindstone way.

A good wake up call in case you weren't paying attention to
what is going on around you in the real world. If you have,
then you should still read this book to understand the day
to day problems faced by the working poor (or even lower middle class).

This book should be required reading for every student that doesn't value the benefit of getting an education.The common denominator among the people descibed in this book--with the exception of the author--was a lack of education. None of them had any skills that could provide a decent income, and as such were forced to take minimum wage, unskilled jobs.This is what's facing people who don't learn useful trade skills, or stay in school.I found the chapter on Wal-Mart work conditions enlightening, but not really surprising, since that company had previously been found guilty of exploiting overseas labor.The point Ehrenreich makes about the lack of affordable housing is important and true. I live in Los Angeles, where at present home prices, you must have an upper class income to afford buying a home.The current real estate prices here totally prevent any thought of home-buying for middle-class, much less poorer people.Despite all this, however, I'm still in favor of welfare reform, since I've witnessed many people have 6 children when they couldn't realistically afford to raise one, knowing that they have the cushion of welfare to support them. It doesn't help those poor kids, though. One more thing: in my life, I've worked some of the types of jobs described in this book, and I, too, found that the less I got paid, the worse I was treated, and the harder I was expected to work. Those jobs still bring back nightmares, and I have only sympathy for those forced to work such awful jobs.