Barbara (Alexander) Ehrenreich was born August 26, 1941 in Butte, Montana daughter of Ben Howes and Isabelle Oxley Alexander. The family moved often during her childhood. She has been married and divorced two times. Her first marriage was to John Ehrenreich in 1966. They had two children Rosa and Benjamin. She married Gary Stevenson, a warehouse employee, in 1983. Barbara Ehrenreich is an outspoken feminist and Socialist party leader. Her early writing focused on health issues and she exposed inefficiency, inhumanity, and self-serving policies. Her focus then became women’s issues where she unveiled male domination of the female health care system. She challenged the assumption that feminism is the cause of America’s domestic upheaval. Her writing covers issues such as the American middle class and its attitude toward working and poorer classes, consumerism, social justice, poverty, and unemployment. Ehrenreich incorporates a combination of wit, anger, melancholy, and rage into her writing.

Education
» B.A. 1963, Reed College (chemistry, physics)
» Ph.D.1968, Rockefeller University (cell biology)

Career
» Staff member at the Health Policy Advisory Center, New York, NY
» Assistant professor of health sciences at State University of New York College at Old Westbury
» Writer, editor, columnist, and essayist for a variety of publications including: Seven Days, Mother Jones, Time, and The Guardian
» Associate fellow for the New York Institute for the Humanities
» Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies
» Co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America

Awards
» National Magazine Award
» Ford Foundation for Humanistic Perspectives on Contemporary Issues
» Guggenheim Fellowship
» Christopher Award
» Los Angeles Times Book Award in Current Interest category
» Puffin/Nation Prize

Nickel and Dimed Summary  » In this New York Times bestseller, Barbara Ehrenreich, a successful, affluent, Ph.D. candidate, sets off on a tour of the country while attempting to sustain herself at “entry-level” jobs. In each locale she faces the challenge of finding a place to live while spending $500 a month for rent. Then she looks for employment that will help her make ends meet. Along the way she waits tables, cleans hotel rooms, works at a nursing home, and becomes a Wal-Mart “associate” in Minneapolis. Her first-person narrative transforms the book into a memoir of her time in poverty. Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under President Clinton remarked, “It personalizes the plight of the poor in ways that bare statistics don’t.” Ehrenreich stated, “How former welfare recipients and single mothers will (and do) survive in the low-wage workforce, I cannot imagine.”