Barbara Ehrenreich author photo
Image via Wikimedia Commons, sous licence CC BY-SA 2.5.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Né(e): August 26, 1941 – Butte, Montana, United States

Liens sociaux:

Barbara Ehrenreich was an American journalist, social critic, and activist best known for her investigative writing on economic inequality and labor, particularly her bestselling book Nickel and Dimed. Author of 21 books and frequent contributor to major publications, her accessible reportage and advocacy influenced public debates on poverty and social justice.

Biographie et Parcours de l'Auteur

Barbara Ehrenreich was born in 1941 in Butte, Montana, amidst the vibrancy of a blue-collar mining town deeply defined by her family's roots in mining. She showed an early affinity for inquiry, beginning to journal in ninth grade and aspiring to understand the larger forces shaping human life. Ehrenreich’s educational journey led her to Reed College for a degree in chemistry, and then to Rockefeller University where she earned a PhD in cellular immunology, demonstrating intellectual rigor that would later underpin her writing. However, following brief stints in scientific research, policy analysis, and teaching at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, Ehrenreich pivoted toward writing in the 1970s, spurred by the political and cultural ferment of the era.

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Citations

quote
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots
-Nickel and Dimed
quote
What you don't necessarily realize when you start selling your time by the hour is that what you're really selling is your life
-Nickel and Dimed
quote
When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society
-Nickel and Dimed
quote
Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia
-Bright-Sided
quote
The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all
-Bright-Sided
quote
There are no secret economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there are a host of special costs
-Nickel and Dimed
quote
By the Reagan era, the 'culture of poverty' had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused not by low wages or a lack of jobs but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles
-Nickel and Dimed
quote
If men were equally at risk from this condition...then I am sure that pregnancy would be classified as a sexually transmitted disease and abortions would be no more controversial than emergency appendectomies
-Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes
quote
The fact is that heterosexual sex for most people is in no way free of the power relations between men and women
-Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes
quote
America is addicted to wars of distraction
-Barbara Ehrenreich Quotes

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Voix de la Communauté

"Barbara Ehrenreich was a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist best known for her book Nickel and Dimed"

Wikipedia

"Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of fourteen books, including New York Times bestsellers Bait and Switch and Fear of Falling"

ThriftBooks

"Barbara Ehrenreich's books blend expert analysis with her trademark voice and tackle myths about class and society"

The New York Public Library

"Barbara Ehrenreich built a career combining journalism and activism in pursuit of social truth and reform"

Five Books

"Barbara Ehrenreich is an American journalist, bestselling author and activist, whose books have been frequently recommended on Five Books"

Five Books

"Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed became a wild bestseller and a major work exposing working-class hardship in America"

Publishers Weekly

"Barbara Ehrenreich was best known for her polemical works on social justice, such as Bright-Sided and Bait and Switch"

Publishers Weekly

"Barbara Ehrenreich has a well-deserved reputation as a trenchant critic of contemporary American society"

Publishers Weekly

"Barbara Ehrenreich takes on hot-button issues in her passionate and argumentative collections, challenging the status quo"

Publishers Weekly

"Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed is frequently cited as essential reading for understanding America’s working poor"

The New York Public Library

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