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From Publishers Weekly
When a hospital employee whose hospital-supplied insurance doesn't cover her hospital-incurred bill finds her wages garnished, where's a political satirist to go for material? Feisty, fearlessly progressive Ehrenreich offers laughter on the way to tears in 62 previously published essays that show the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. She investigates pockets of poverty among undocumented workers, military families and recent college graduates. Ehrenreich's reach is capacious, encompassing not only unemployment, health insurance and inflation, but corporate spying, cancer studies, marriage education, the abstinence training business and Disney's Princess products. Her passion, compassion and wit keep these excursions lively and timely—even when yesterday's headlines provide the immediate provocation, e.g., JetBlue's snow snafu. The vignettes go down a bit like eating peanuts—too many at one time palls, but they're not unhealthy, unless you have an allergic reaction to Ehrenreich's message: America is being polarized between the superrich few and the subrich everyone else. Entertaining Ehrenreich certainly is, but she raises a hard, serious question: How many 'wake-up calls' do we need, people...? (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
America in the ’aughts—hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by one of the country’s most prominent social critics
Now in paperback, Barbara Ehrenreich’s widely acclaimed This Land Is Their Land takes the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory and finds lurid extremes all around. While members of the moneyed elite have bought up 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 Masters of the Universe have thrown themselves into the casino economy, the less fortunate have been fed a diet of morality, marriage, and abstinence. With perfect satiric pitch, Ehrenreich reveals a country scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty.
Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation—including new and unpublished essays—confirm once again that Ehrenreich is, as the San Francisco Chronicle proclaims, “essential reading.”
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (42 customer reviews)
111 of 121 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Wake-Up Call for America, Jun 27 2008
By Roy E. Perry "amateur philosopher" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation (Hardcover)
America is in big trouble, asserts Ehrenreich. Greed is in the saddle and rides roughshod over democratic principles. The rich are getting richer; the poor are getting poorer; a once-healthy middle class has become an endangered species.Whether writing of "Chasms of Inequality," "Meanness on the Rise," "Strangling the Middle Class," "Hell Day at Work," "Declining Health," "Getting Sex Straight," or "False Gods," Ehrenreich pulls no punches, gives no quarter, takes no captives.
The most serious threats to a deep morality, argues Ehrenhreich, are not abortionists, stem cell researchers, or matrimonially minded gays, but those who wage an unnecessary war and ruthlessly oppress the poor.
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Pat Robertson will hate this book. Many grossly overpaid corporate CEO's and HMO bigwigs won't care much for it either.
One need not be a devotee of Karl Marx's Das Kapital to perceive (unless one is willfully blind) the dark underside of capitalism, which thrives on the cynical creed: "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost!"
Is Ehrenreich's book agitprop or solid sociopolitical criticism? The reader's reaction will depend on his or her political stance. I believe This Land Is Their Land is right on point: a devastating critique of capitalism run amok. It's a wake-up call concerning the looting and fleecing of America.
If Ehrenreich sounds angry, outraged, and fighting mad, it's because she is. Hers is a righteous indignation against those who are destroying everything that moral and compassionate people hold dear.
Like an ancient prophet, she issues scathing indictments against plutocrats who trample on the poor. In her book one hears the thunderous voice of Amos: "Let justice roll on like a mighty river and righteousness like an everflowing stream."
An excerpt from the book: "How many 'wake-up calls' do we need, people--how many broken lives, drowned cities, depleted food pantries, people dead for lack of ordinary health care? We approach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century in a bleak landscape cluttered with boarded-up homes and littered with broken dreams. . . . Why don't we dare say it? The looting of America has gone on too long, and the average American is too maxed out, overworked, and overspent to have anything left to take. We'll need a new deal, a new distribution of power and wealth, if we want to restore the beautiful idea that was 'America.'"
52 of 56 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Depressing, but a must read book, July 8 2008
By Lesa Holstine - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation (Hardcover)
When I told my husband that Barbara Ehrenreich's This Land is Their Land was a depressing book, he said that's because it's true. He told me not to read reality-based books if it's going to depress me.Barbara Ehrenreich is the bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, and Bait and Switch. She can call this book satirical commentary, but it's sad that her points about our government, our health care system, and our work force are actually right on target. Early on, she says that we've changed from a country where we felt we were all in it together, to one where the philosophy is closer to "I've got mine." She actually says, "Let the environment decay, the infrastructure crumble, the public hospitals close, the schools get by on bake sales, the workers drop from exhaustion - who cares?" We're now a nation of the haves and the have-nots, and more and more of us are becoming have-nots.
Ehrenreich points out that people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their health care, and no one is speaking up. Why aren't people complaining? We're letting our government and our businesses, such as Wal-Mart, control the country. And, they do a very good job of distracting us from the bad conditions in this country by pointing us in the direction of side issues, such as gay marriage and pro-life and pro-choice disagreements. She isn't the first one to say that illegal immigration is the latest distraction. "But it wasn't a Mexican who took away your pension or sold you on a dodgy mortgage." We're afraid for our jobs. We're afraid to lose our houses and our health care. It's not the first time in our country's history that a minority group has been selected as a scapegoat to distract us from the actual social conditions in this country.
The dictionary defines satire as "The use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc." Barbara Ehrenreich successfully uses sarcasm to do all of those things. She exposes the vices, follies and deceit behind our business practices, our health care practices, and our employment. She does a wonderful job in ridiculing our fascination with business success books, when the only people getting rich are the authors of those trite books. We could all take lessons from This Land is Their Land in denouncing the wrongs in this country.
I hope that Barbara Ehrenreich's This Land is Their Land is as successful as Nickel and Dimed. It's another important book, by a very important author. This book needs to be read, and discussed. Most of all, we need to take some action to change ourselves, and our country, before it's too late.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sad But True, Aug 3 2008
By Rae - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation (Hardcover)
Barbara Ehrenreich uses sarcasm, anecdotes and humor to discuss the current major problems facing average Americans: The rich getting richer at the expense of the middle and lower classes; corporate greed and how it has created the loss of good paying jobs while making life hell for those still working; the lack of adequate health care for millions; and the way our government uses fear to distract us from these basic quality of life issues.
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