Barbara Ehrenreich Knihy

A brilliant and insightful exploration of the rise and fall of the American middle class by New York Times bestselling author, Barbara Ehrenreich. One of Barbara Ehrenreich's most classic and prophetic works, Fear of Falling closely examines the insecurities of the American middle class in an attempt to explain its turn to the right during the last two decades of the 20th century. Weaving finely-tuned expert analysis with her trademark voice, Ehrenreich traces the myths about the middle class to their roots, determines what led to the shrinking of what was once a healthy percentage of the population, and how, in its ambition and anxiety, that population has retreated from responsible leadership. Newly reissued and timely as ever, Fear of Falling places the middle class of yesterday under the microscope and reveals exactly how we arrived at the middle class of today.

The author's second work of satirical commentary reflects on one of the cruelest decades in memory, the 2000s, in which she finds a nation scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty. Her first book of satirical commentary, The Worst Years of Our Lives, was about the Reagan era. The one problem was the title: couldn't some prophetic fact-checker have seen that the worst years of our lives, far worse, were still to come? Here they are, the 2000s, and in this book she subjects them to biting and incisive satire. Taking the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory, she finds lurid extremes all around. While members of the moneyed elite can buy congressmen, many in the working class can barely buy lunch. While a wealthy minority obsessively consumes cosmetic surgery, the poor often go without health care for their children. And while the corporate C-suites are now nests of criminality, the less fortunate are fed a diet of morality, marriage, and abstinence. Her anecdotes are as sardonic as they are spot-on: pet insurance for your kids; Salvation Army fashions for those who can no longer afford Wal-Mart; and rage against those who have given us a nation scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty.

Uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans began to view mass festivities as foreign and 'savage', the author shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greek's worship of Dionysus to the medieval practices of Christianity as a 'danced religion'.

From the bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed and a former editor in chief Mother Jones, this women's history classic brilliantly uncovers the constraints imposed on women in the name of science. Since the nineteenth century, professionals have been invoking scientific expertise to prescribe what women should do for their own good. Among the experts’ diagnoses and remedies: menstruation was an illness requiring seclusion; pregnancy, a disabling condition; and higher education, a threat to long-term health of the uterus. From clitoridectomies to tame women’s behavior in the nineteenth century to the censure of a generation of mothers as castrators in the 1950s, doctors have not hesitated to intervene in women’s sexual, emotional, and maternal lives. Even domesticity, the most popular prescription for a safe environment for women, spawned legions of “scientific” experts. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English has never lost faith in science itself, but insist that we hold those who interpret it to higher standards. Women are entering the medical and scientific professions in greater numbers but as recent research shows, experts continue to use pseudoscience to tell women how to live. For Her Own Good provides today’s readers with an indispensable dose of informed skepticism.

In a world shaped by mass migration and economic exchange on an ever- increasing scale, women are moving around the globe as never before. This anthology examines the unexplored consequences of globalization on the lives of women worldwide. schovat popis

A satirist and social commentator looks into the soul of the 1990s in a collection of essays that takes a sharp look at both conservative and liberal viewpoints

Published for the first time as a Granta Books paperback: Barbara Ehrenreich's groundbreaking investigation into the roots of war, with a new introduction by the author.

From a bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes a fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.

Provides a firsthand account of life in low-wage America--the story of Ehrenreich's attempts to eke out a living while working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart associate. --From publisher description

Intrigued by reports of poverty and despair within America's white-collar corporate workforce, the author decided to infiltrate their world as an undercover reporter, and learn about the problems facing middle-class executives. Her story is funny, and delivers a warning about the future that faces corporate employees everywhere.