Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,   ISBN:9780805088380

Customer Rating: 

This book is great. It will open your eyes to the not so fortunate people trying to get by. It is very powerful

Customer Rating: 

Informative expose on how what it is like to try to survive on a paltry pay check.

Customer Rating: 

I rank a book as outstanding if it permenantly changes my behavior. And this book did. I read it several years ago and ever since then I have tipped the chamber maids in hotels. (and I travel a lot so that is lots of tips)

I read the reviews and saw many people were down on her for primarily 2 reasons:

1 - politics (they thought she was too liberal). What I say to that is politic often engenders overstatement and polarization. But life is more shades of grey than black and white.

2 - they are outraged that she purports to represent the poor when she is not. What I say to that is the book is not for the poor. It is targeted at waking up the better off and it does that. And if you are truly poor - it helps you. So support the book and encourage more to read it.

Customer Rating: 

This book, though skewed by the author's self-imposed restrictions and her financial and health starting points, offers good insight into what it is like to live as a minimum wage worker. This copy in particular has an afterword that elaborates further on some changes that have occurred since the original publish date. Many will find that they can relate to her story and believe this to be a compelling argument to improve the conditions in this nation.

Customer Rating: 

A good and valuable book that helps us understand and appreciate America's working class, especially those trying to get by on minimum wage in America. It's not easy, if not impossible.

Effectively lived and researched...you may never look a a person in the service industry the same way again. This book alone will make them more human to you, more a part of the same human race you are part of, and that's a good thing. As the author states, "the working poor are the biggest philanthropists to American way of life." Many of the "blessings we enjoy" come about because of the daily sacrifices and sometimes sufferings of the working poor..

Unfortuately the author somewhat loses her way toward the end of the book when she becomes more of a union organizer than a person telling a story we all ought to hear and need to hear.

The stories she tells stand alone without her call for action.
Her shift to union organizer and activist take away from the story she had so effectively told.

Still, however, this is a small criticism of a good and great book.