In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich tells a powerful and cruel story of everyday survival. His story transcends the divide between rich and poor and conveys a powerful account of the dark corners that lie somewhere beyond the popular depiction of American prosperity. Throughout this book, the reader will be intimately introduced to the world of the “working poor,” a place unfamiliar to the vast majority of affluent and middle-class Americans. What makes this world especially real is the fact that we've all met a hard-working hotel maid, store associate, or restaurant waitress, but we almost never think about what their lives are like real? We regularly dismiss these people as almost invisible and they take a back seat to our normal routines. But these are real people facing very real and serious problems and, even by conservative estimates, there are millions of them struggling to persist every day. What makes this book so fascinating is that Ehrenreich does not document the daily lives of workers. poor people by analyzing government statistics or observing people from a remote location. Instead, Ehrenreich becomes a member of the working poor, and her goal is quite simple: she wants to know if she can match her income to her expenses. Nickel and Dimed is a story that details the results of Ehrenreich's "practical experiment," but it raises concerns that go far beyond its original focus. The book opens with Ehrenreich at a lunch meeting with Lewis Lapham, editor-in-chief of Harper's Magazine. One topic discussed at lunch was poverty in America. Ehrenreich and Lapham wondered how the "roughly four million women about to be pushed out into the workforce......in the middle of the paper...the most jaded conservative reader might be able to engage in beneficial personal reflection. concerning the situation of the working poor. American politicians and policymakers, many of whom seem radically out of touch with the daily reality facing a percentage of Americans, should also read the book. Perhaps the lasting contribution of Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed lies in the realization that poverty is not a consequence of unemployment and simply having a job does not provide a route out of poverty. As Ehrenreich herself pointed out, the majority of people she lived with and in her surroundings were not drug dealers or prostitutes, but simply workers who did not have the capital to rent an apartment normal. Ehrenreich's book has the potential to open the eyes of many Americans and perhaps, if more people are aware of it, positive change could result..