This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

America in the 'aughts — hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by the bestselling social critic hailed as "the soul mate"* of Jonathan Swift.

Barbara Ehrenreich's first book of satirical commentary, The Worst Years of Our Lives, about the Reagan era, was received with bestselling acclaim. 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 Land Is Their Land, Ehrenreich subjects them to the most biting and incisive satire of her career.

Taking the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory, Ehrenreich 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. Ehrenreich's antidotes 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 boundless rage against those who have given us a nation scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty.

Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation show once again that Ehrenreich is, as Molly Ivins said, "good for the soul."

*The Times (London)

"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...?'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The recent economic downturn, with the collapse of the housing bubble and the tightening of credit, has revealed a world of financial risk that had been there all along, unnoticed by most of us. Two new books examine other financial perils and inequities that put us further at risk.

You might not expect a book on economic policy to be a page-turner, but Peter Gosselin's "High Wire"... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) is just that. Gosselin, a national economics reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has written a systematic investigation of the many ways financial risk has been transferred from employers, the federal government and insurance companies to individuals and families. Gosselin shows, in frightening detail, how our lives as Americans have become riskier over the last few decades. Instead of believing that we are mutually responsible for each other, we now rely on markets that have repeatedly demonstrated that they are distorted by greed, corruption and irrationality.

Gosselin makes his case using statistics and stories of real people, such as Debra Potter. Potter was a stay-at-home mother until the late 1980s, when she became an insurance agent to supplement the modest income of her husband, a Presbyterian pastor. In 2001, she earned more than $250,000. But by the end of May 2002, she had become so disabled by symptoms of what was later diagnosed as multiple sclerosis that she had to give up her job. Her insurer, whose policies she had previously sold, tried to reclassify her disability to reduce her benefits substantially.

Despite continued appeals, the insurance company stood by its decision, and Potter's condition worsened. As a result, the Potters spent almost all of their savings on Debra's treatment and living expenses and were forced to pull their son out of college. In August 2003, her diagnosis was definitive, and Social Security began disability payments. Nearly two years after the definite diagnosis, Potter's insurer finally began paying benefits. A check for the benefits previously denied arrived three years later, but the damage was done.

Gosselin marshals evidence that Potter's case was more than an unfortunate or isolated mistake, explaining how insurance companies routinely reduced payments of claims. In cases involving employer-provided insurance, the courts have let them off the hook by interpreting the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which covers employee benefits, in a way that favors the insurance companies.

The book also shows that the consequences of losing a job have become greater in the last 25 years. Unemployment benefits now replace less of many workers' income, and the loss of a job often starts a spiral in which subsequent jobs pay less and are less secure. On average, he says, the percentage wage drop for college graduates who lost jobs in the early 2000s was four times as great as it was in the 1990s. And that was before our current economic troubles. Gosselin concedes that unemployment has been low in the last few years compared to what it was in the mid-'70s and mid-'80s. But since many families now depend on two wage-earners, the risks of a family facing a substantial loss in income have risen. "As with so much else about the present economy," Gosselin writes, "the dangers are like rifle shots," hitting fewer targets but doing more lasting damage.

Gosselin goes on to explain how companies have transferred costs and risks to employees by dropping traditional pension plans and shifting health insurance costs. This is all part of a change, he shows, from an economy in which employers felt some obligation to workers even in tough times. Remember when a layoff was temporary, not a euphemism for firing?

There is so much more: how credit card debt has supplanted federal benefits, how a college education is more likely to guarantee huge debt than a good job, how your home is very likely badly underinsured. It adds up to an unsettling picture.

Barbara Ehrenreich's "This Land Is Their Land" looks at some of the same issues as Gosselin's book, but hers is more commentary than reporting, bringing together blog entries and essays, many of them previously published. The author of the best-selling "Nickel and Dimed," Ehrenreich takes on well-worn targets, including greedy executives, oil companies and Wal-Mart, and she offers more indignation than insight. For example, she rants about pharmaceutical companies hiring college cheerleaders as sales reps, but her outrage seems focused on the idea of cheerleaders taking such positions, not on the possibility that these sales reps are promoting unneeded remedies. Corporations want employees to be perky and enthusiastic, she laments. "Maybe the cheerleaders should take over the entire corporation," she concludes. "CEOs, for example, define much of their work as 'motivational,' which suggests it could be done just as well, if not better, by a peppy airhead in a microskirt."

But some of her essays make good points, such as one about the ways the poor are forced to pay higher costs. For instance, she notes, citing a 2006 Brookings Institution study, car buyers who earn less than $30,000 a year pay 2 percentage points more for a car loan than do more affluent buyers.

She occasionally can also be funny: I laughed at her description of children, when she compares medical spending on them vs. pets: "True, they are not the ideal companions for the busy young professional," Ehrenreich writes. "It can take two to three years to housebreak them, their standards of personal hygiene are lamentably low, at least compared with cats, and large numbers of them cannot learn to 'sit' without the aid of Ritalin." As a whole, though, her book is like thin, reheated broth with just a morsel or two in it.

Martha M. Hamilton, a former business columnist for The Washington Post, writes about financial planning for retirement for the AARP Bulletin Online.

Reviewed by Martha M. Hamilton, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)

"This thought-provoking book shouldn't be read like a novel....But reading a few essays at a time lets Ehrenreich's thoughtful messages sink home." Miami Herald

"Those looking for an easy answer for such cultural narcissism will not find it in this book, but they will find plenty of black-laced humor and, at times, a strong jolt of passion." Portland Oregonian

"Of the 15 books she's written...few spill over with the effervescent sarcasm that runs through This Land Is Their Land....Ehrenreich writes with a charm that makes you forgive the hyperbole: She is, after all, trying to get your attention." Los Angeles Times

"Journalism at its best speaks truth to power. And that is exactly what Barbara Ehrenreich has done in This Land Is Their Land. May she keep doing it for a long time." BookReporter.com

Ehrenreich'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.

America in the aughts—hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by one of the countrys most prominent social critics

Now in paperback, Barbara Ehrenreichs 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.”

America in the 'aughts--hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by the bestselling social critic hailed as the soul mate* of Jonathan Swift

Barbara Ehrenreich's first book of satirical commentary, The Worst Years of Our Lives, about the Reagan era, was received with bestselling acclaim. 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 Land Is Their Land, Ehrenreich subjects them to the most biting and incisive satire of her career.

Taking the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory, Ehrenreich 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. Ehrenreich's antidotes 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 boundless rage against those who have given us a nation scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty.

Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation show once again that Ehrenreich is, as Molly Ivins said, good for the soul.--*The Times (London)

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of fourteen books, including Dancing in the Streets and The New York Times bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. A frequent contributor to Harper's and The Nation, she has also been a columnist at The New York Times and Time magazine.

In her second book of satirical commentary, Barbara Ehrenreich subjects the 'aughts to the most biting and incisive satire of her career. She points to shortfalls in the US's standards of health care, employment, education, immigration, and personal liberties. She also looks beyond those issues to the great inadequacies in the modern American standard of living.

Taking the measure of what America has left with after the cruelest decade in memory, Ehrenreich 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. Ehrenreich's antidotes 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 boundless rage against those who have given us a nation scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty.

With research and wit, Ehrenreich dissects and humanizes the social problems that plague the U.S. as a whole, even though it remains a nation divided. In her second book of satirical commentary, Barbara Ehrenreich subjects the 'aughts to the most biting and incisive satire of her career. She points to shortfalls in United States' standards of health care, employment, education, immigration, and personal liberties. She also looks beyond those issues to the great inadequacies in the modern American standard of living.

There's a reason that people scoop up Ehrenreich's books: big chunks of the excoriation are fantastically funny. She's at her best when she takes on idiocies in our culture--skewering the shelves of new business books that seem to have been written by people who don't understand any genre except Powerpoint, and lamenting that 'contrary to the rumors I have been trying to spread for some time, Disney Princess products are not contaminated with lead' . . . She can be quite insightful, noting that the photos from Abu Ghraib reveal once and for all that women are no more moral than men . . . In refreshing contrast with the many media outlets obsessed with profiling the rich and the famous, Ehrenreich uses her platform to tell stories of the down and out. She also does a service in pointing out truly stupid public policies--for instance, forcing soldiers' families to rely on food stamps.--Laura Vanderkam, City Journal

With burning wit and righteousness, Ehrenreich critiques politicians, evangelicals, corporations (Wal-Mart, Circuit City, the Gap, Target) and the odd movie (Miami Vice) with a scorn that abates only when she's talking about her granddaughters, whom she invokes to remind MSNBC analyst Kate O'Beirne that she is far from the family-hating feminist O'Beirne makes her out to be . . . Given the wretched state of U.S. healthcare, the decline of manufacturing jobs, the looming threat to reproductive rights and the nattering mendacity that issues from the mouths of cable-news pundits, it's hard to deny Ehrenreich her outrage. Hardly any contemporary social critic is so entertaining in her darkly satirical fury, or so clear. Neither of the current presidential candidates has matched Ehrenreich in driving home the healthcare problem as she does in one short essay (written shortly after President Bush vetoed a bill expanding state health insurance coverage for children) titled 'Children Deserve Veterinary Care Too' . . . You can sense in her fulminations over self-help books and workplace bullies a progressive voice yearning to be heard by the people who need her most--the ones who don't read the Nation or Harper's or even the New York Times.--Judith Lewis, Los Angeles Times

Ehrenreich follows the best American tradition of political satire, skewering a country that gives acupuncture to dogs while kids go without health insurance. Some of these tidbits are funny, such as one where Ehrenreich tries to figure out the secret hand signals of lesbian women hooking up in airport bathrooms. Others are moving, including a piece on college graduate burdened with debt in an era when a bachelor's degree isn't worth the paper it is printed on . . . Ehrenreich poignantly writes how the photos from Abu Ghraib 'broke my heart' with her realization that women can be as cruel as men, though I thought we had figured that out with Diane Downs . . . Readers] will find plenty of black-laced humor and, at times, a strong jolt of passion.--Rene Denfeld, The Oregonian (Portland)

Ehrenreich once again rides to the rescue of the dispossessed in This Land Is Theirs: Reports From a Divided Nation. Tirelessly skewering the Bush administration's 'deft upward redistribution of wealth' and a culture that applauds an 'orgy of accumulation at the top, ' she almost makes me wish I were a hidebound, flint-hearted Republican, so that I could test the sharpness of her barbs. They seem well honed to me, but is that only because I so badly want them to sting?--Adam Begley, The New York Observer

Barbara Ehrenreich finds herself, once again, in a dreadful place where greedy, nasty little people--corporate CEOs, college administrators, media moguls, the perpetually insatiable, the Chris

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of fourteen books, including Dancing in the Streets and the New York Times bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. A frequent contributor to Harper's and The Nation, she has also been a columnist at The New York Times and Time magazine.