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Summary
Summary
Winner of the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, HAD I KNOWN contains the most provocative, incendiary, and career-making pieces by bestselling author, essayist, political activist, and "veteran muckraker" Barbara Ehrenreich ( The New Yorker ).
A self-proclaimed "myth buster by trade," Barbara Ehrenreich has covered an extensive range of topics as a journalist and political activist, and is unafraid to dive into intellectual waters that others deem too murky. Now, Had I Known gathers the articles and excerpts from a long-ranging career that most highlight Ehrenreich's brilliance, social consciousness, and wry wit.
From Ehrenreich's award-winning article "Welcome to Cancerland," published shortly after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, to her groundbreaking undercover investigative journalism in Nickel and Dimed , to her exploration of death and mortality in the New York Times bestseller, Natural Causes , Barbara Ehrenreich has been writing radical, thought-provoking, and worldview-altering pieces for over four decades. Her reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review , the Washington Post , the Atlantic Monthly , and the Los Angeles Times Book Review , among others, while her essays, op-eds and feature articles have appeared in the New York Times , Harper's Magazine , the New York Times Magazine , Time , the Wall Street Journal , and many more. Had I Known pulls from the vast and varied collection of one of our country's most incisive thinkers to create one must-have volume.
Author Notes
Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of "Blood Rites"; "The Worst Years of Our Lives"; "Fear of Falling", which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, & eight other books. A frequent contributor to Time, Harper's, Esquire, The New Republic, Mirabella, The Nation, The New York Magazine, she lives near Key West, Florida.
(Publisher Fact Sheets)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Activist and journalist Ehrenreich (Natural Causes) addresses numerous hot-button issues in this argumentative and passionate collection. She challenges the status quo throughout, while also including a healthy dose of self-questioning. The 40 selections--assembled into six categories (Haves and Have-Nots; Health; Men; Women; God, Science, and Joy; and Bourgeois Blunders) and published between 1984 and 2018--address race, class, and gender with admirable breadth. Writing on sexual harassment in 2017, Ehrenreich reminds the reader of how little focus has been accorded to abuses committed against working-class women. An essay from over a decade ago on immigration is notably topical, as is one written soon after the 2008 financial crash on the "criminalization of being poor." She is wittily satirical at times, as when skewering adherents to "the cult of conspicuous busyness," who feel "embarrassed to be caught doing only one thing at a time," and bitterly Swiftian at others, proposing a combination of "welfare and flogging" as an acceptably punitive compromise for opponents of government aid to the poor. Her most acerbic passages will be off-putting to some, but most will find this a gripping look at why "dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots." Agent: Kristine Dahl, ICM Partners. (Mar.)
Booklist Review
It's fair to say there is hardly an aspect of life in the late twentieth- to early-twenty-first centuries that veteran journalist and author Ehrenreich (Natural Causes, 2018) hasn't examined. From the wage gap and exploitation of workers to gender inequality and second-wave feminism, Ehrenreich digs deep in her investigations into the topics that capture the collective fancy as well as those that rarely register in the social consciousness. This collection of essays, investigative journalism, blog posts, and op-eds range from 1984 to the present. Most have been previously published in a variety of places, including Guernica, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the New Republic. It's a one-stop shop for fans of Ehrenreich's gimlet eye and informed outrage. Whether talking about welfare reform during the 2008 recession or the helplessness that threatens to burgeon into a mental health crisis, Ehrenreich brings a passion and practicality to her discourse. There is a sense that Ehrenreich is always in receptor mode, that cogent analysis is her default setting. A rewarding, illuminating tour de force.--Carol Haggas Copyright 2020 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Ehrenreich, best known for her exposé Nickel and Dimed, shares a look back at her considerable body of published essays. The pieces, written between 1984 and 2019, appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Mother Jones, the Nation, and Harper's Magazine. In her introduction, she notes journalism's declining status and urges better support for the profession. To that effect, she has started a nonprofit, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. The work is divided into six broad topic areas: "Haves and Have-Nots"; "Health"; "Men"; "Women"; "God, Science, and Joy"; and "Bourgeois Blunders"), each containing essays published decades apart. Interestingly, the problems she highlights have not changed much over the years. The technology of the times may have altered, but the social problems remain. In a 1986 New York Times article, she asked: "Is the Middle Class Doomed?" Her 1987 Mother Jones essay, "Welcome to Fleece U," documented the high tuition of colleges and universities. Unchanged by time, however, is the author's stylish prose. VERDICT For readers interested in social justice issues in late 20th- to early 21st-century America.--Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. xi |
| Haves and Have-Nots | |
| Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America | p. 3 |
| How You Can Save Wail Street | p. 47 |
| S&M As Public Policy | p. 51 |
| Going to Extremes: CEOs vs. Slaves | p. 55 |
| Are Illegal Immigrants the Problem? | p. 58 |
| What's So Great about Gated Communities? | p. 62 |
| Is It Now a Crime to be Poor? | p. 66 |
| A Homespun Safety Net | p. 73 |
| Dead, White, and Blue: The Great Die-Off of America's Blue-Collar White People | p. 80 |
| Health | |
| Welcome to Cancerland | p. 89 |
| The Naked Truth about Fitness | p. 121 |
| Got Grease? | p. 128 |
| Our Broken Mental Health System | p. 133 |
| Liposuction: The Key to Energy Independence | p. 137 |
| The Selfish Side of Gratitude | p. 140 |
| Men | |
| How "Natural" Is Rape? | p. 147 |
| The Warrior Culture | p. 151 |
| At Last, a New Man | p. 155 |
| Patriarchy Deflated | p. 176 |
| Women | |
| Are Women Getting Sadder? Or Are We All Just Getting a Lot More Gullible? | p. 183 |
| Our Neighborhood Porn Committee | p. 189 |
| Strategies of Corporate Women | p. 193 |
| What Abu Ghraib Taught Me | p. 203 |
| Making Sense of la Difference | p. 208 |
| Outclassed: Sexual Harassment (with Alissa Quart) | p. 212 |
| God, Science, and Joy | |
| Mind Your Own Business | p. 219 |
| The Animal Cure | p. 229 |
| The Missionary Position | p. 241 |
| The New Creationism: Biology Under Attack (with Janet McIntosh) | p. 253 |
| Up Close at Trinidad's Carnival | p. 265 |
| Bourgeois Blunders | |
| Family Values | p. 275 |
| The Cult of Busyness | p. 286 |
| Death of a Yuppie Dream (with John Ehrenreich) | p. 291 |
| The Unbearable Being of Whiteness | p. 301 |
| Is the Middle Class Doomed? | p. 305 |
| Welcome to Fleece U. | p. 321 |
| Prewatched TV | p. 325 |
| The Recessions Racial Divide (with Dedrick Muhammad) | p. 328 |
| Divisions of Labor | p. 336 |
| Throw Them Out with the Trash: Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue | p. 344 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 351 |
| Index | p. 355 |
| About the Author | p. 365 |