[−]
  • Search Digit-count Valid ISBN Invalid ISBN Valid Barcode Invalid Barcode
Share Organize Explore

has ALL you need!

A community for book lovers to create their own bookshelves, share and explore books.

Sign Up for FREE!
Blog this item

Bait and Switch

The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

By Barbara Ehrenreich

(3)

| Others | 9780805076066

Book Description

Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible rsum of a professional in transition, she attempts to land a middle-class joContinue

Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible rsum of a professional in transition, she attempts to land a middle-class job -- undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then trawling a series of EST-like boot camps, job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She gets an image makeover, works to project a winning attitude, yet is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and -- again and again -- rejected. Bait and Switch highlights the people whove done everything right -- gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive rsums -- yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster, and not simply due to the vagaries of the business cycle. Todays ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding their surplus employees -- plunging them, for months or years at a stretch, into the twilight zone of white-collar unemployment, where job searching becomes a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for these newly disposable workers -- and little security even for those who have jobs. Like the now classic Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch is alternately hilarious and tragic, a searing expos of economic cruelty where we least expect it.

2 Reviews

  • 2 people find this helpful

    Though the grim view of the economic donward movement for white-collar cooprate workers is scary enought, given I might count as one of them, the too much too often contradictory sarcasm, especially in the quote un-quote style, reduces the book to merely a sophisticately written parody than an awake ... (continue)

    Though the grim view of the economic donward movement for white-collar cooprate workers is scary enought, given I might count as one of them, the too much too often contradictory sarcasm, especially in the quote un-quote style, reduces the book to merely a sophisticately written parody than an awakening call.

    Is this helpful?

    ― meowmeow said on Feb 20, 2007 | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (3)
    • 4 stars
    • 3 stars
    • 2 stars
    • 1 star
  • English Books
  • Others 256 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 0805076069
  • ISBN-13: 9780805076066
  • Publisher: Metropolitan Books
  • Pub date: Sep 06, 2005
  • Dimensions: 21 cm x 14 cm x 3 cm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Paperback, Audio CD and Audio Cassette
Improve data of this book

Prices Change currency & sellers

ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780805076066 Others $24.00 -- Amazon US
£15.05 -- Amazon UK
$27.00 -- Amazon CA
¥3057.00 ¥2751.00 Amazon JP
€18.62 €18.62 Amazon FR
-- €21.53 Amazon DE
Other editions →
+ 1 copy tradable: 1 in USA →