Had I Known

December 16, 2019
Activist and journalist Ehrenreich (Natural Causes) addresses numerous hot-button issues in this argumentative and passionate collection. She challenges the status quo throughout, while also including a healthy dose of self-questioning. The 40 selections—assembled into six categories (Haves and Have-Nots; Health; Men; Women; God, Science, and Joy; and Bourgeois Blunders) and published between 1984 and 2018—address race, class, and gender with admirable breadth. Writing on sexual harassment in 2017, Ehrenreich reminds the reader of how little focus has been accorded to abuses committed against working-class women. An essay from over a decade ago on immigration is notably topical, as is one written soon after the 2008 financial crash on the “criminalization of being poor.” She is wittily satirical at times, as when skewering adherents to “the cult of conspicuous busyness,” who feel “embarrassed to be caught doing only one thing at a time,” and bitterly Swiftian at others, proposing a combination of “welfare and flogging” as an acceptably punitive compromise for opponents of government aid to the poor. Her most acerbic passages will be off-putting to some, but most will find this a gripping look at why “dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.” Agent: Kristine Dahl, ICM Partners.

February 1, 2020
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.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2020
It's fair to say there is hardly an aspect of life in the late twentieth- to early-twenty-first centuries that veteran journalist and author Ehrenreich (Natural Causes, 2018) hasn't examined. From the wage gap and exploitation of workers to gender inequality and second-wave feminism, Ehrenreich digs deep in her investigations into the topics that capture the collective fancy as well as those that rarely register in the social consciousness. This collection of essays, investigative journalism, blog posts, and op-eds range from 1984 to the present. Most have been previously published in a variety of places, including Guernica, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the New Republic. It's a one-stop shop for fans of Ehrenreich's gimlet eye and informed outrage. Whether talking about welfare reform during the 2008 recession or the helplessness that threatens to burgeon into a mental health crisis, Ehrenreich brings a passion and practicality to her discourse. There is a sense that Ehrenreich is always in receptor mode, that cogent analysis is her default setting. A rewarding, illuminating tour de force.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2020

Ehrenreich, best known for her expos� Nickel and Dimed, shares a look back at her considerable body of published essays. The pieces, written between 1984 and 2019, appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Mother Jones, the Nation, and Harper's Magazine. In her introduction, she notes journalism's declining status and urges better support for the profession. To that effect, she has started a nonprofit, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. The work is divided into six broad topic areas: "Haves and Have-Nots"; "Health"; "Men"; "Women"; "God, Science, and Joy"; and "Bourgeois Blunders"), each containing essays published decades apart. Interestingly, the problems she highlights have not changed much over the years. The technology of the times may have altered, but the social problems remain. In a 1986 New York Times article, she asked: "Is the Middle Class Doomed?" Her 1987 Mother Jones essay, "Welcome to Fleece U," documented the high tuition of colleges and universities. Unchanged by time, however, is the author's stylish prose. VERDICT For readers interested in social justice issues in late 20th- to early 21st-century America.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019

Perhaps best known for the New York Times best-selling Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich here collects articles and excerpts illustrating the social concerns she has targeted in her long-ranging career as a "veteran muckraker" (The New Yorker). It's all here, from her award-winning "Welcome to Cancerland" to work done for Nickel and Dimed and Natural Causes to reviews and features in venues like the New York Times Book Review, the Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.