With such relevance to fractured late-capitalist America, Ehrenreich’s work warrants renewed attention.
A compilation of the polemics and journalism of Ehrenreich, showcasing her stylistic evolution and social prescience.
The author is well known for her barbed magazine pieces and bestselling books (most notably, Nickel and Dimed), but she earned her chops as a freelancer. In the introduction, she reflects on this, noting how the literary economy that allowed her to establish her career has become atomized and unstable: “Though I didn’t see it at first, the world of journalism as I had known it was beginning to crumble around me….I saw my own fees at one major news outlet drop to one-third of their value between 2004 and 2009.” In a sense, Ehrenreich’s work has always been mournful, mostly for the traditions of social justice and collective organizing so ruthlessly attacked since the Ronald Reagan administration. The author stayed prolific even after her hardcover success, and this collection is sprawling, packed into sections such as “Haves and Have-Nots,” “Bourgeois Blunders,” and “God, Science, and Joy.” The chapter titles are often provocative (“Going to Extremes: CEOs vs. Slaves,” “S&M as Public Policy,” “The Unbearable Being of Whiteness”), and her significant research is conveyed in a wry, taut polemical style. Prominent topics include the brutalization of poor people (“if poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that criminalization inexorably impoverishes them”), the absurdities of the mental health system, and pervasive misunderstandings about gender and power (on Abu Ghraib: “I never believed that women were innately gentler and less aggressive than men”). While some earlier work may seem dated—e.g., essays on the grating 1980s yuppie ethos—others chillingly foresaw the devastation of labor and the middle class, the privatization of social services, and the increased cruelty of law enforcement toward the vulnerable. Memorably, Ehrenreich reflects on her own working-class roots as the “source of much of my radicalism, feminism, and, by the standards of the eighties, all-around bad attitude.”
With such relevance to fractured late-capitalist America, Ehrenreich’s work warrants renewed attention.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4555-4367-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
IN THE NEWS
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
