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In 1998 Barbara Ehrenreich set out with 1,300 dollars, a car and a laptop to see whether she could live on what a waitress, a hotel maid or a Wal-Mart clerk earns. Her first job, in a restaurant in Key West, paid 5.15 dollars an hour before tips. The result, Nickel and Dimed (2001), became a bestseller and the book she is remembered for. She was born in Butte, Montana, in 1941, took a PhD at Rockefeller University in 1968 and left science and teaching for writing in 1974. Over five decades she wrote more than twenty books, on women and medicine, the middle class, war, positive thinking, faith and dying, before her death in 2022. This guide covers her 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1972–2020 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Barbara Ehrenreich’s best-known book is Nickel and Dimed (2001), her report from a series of low-wage jobs. Her other key books include For Her Own Good (1978, with Deirdre English), Bait and Switch (2005), Bright-sided (2009; Smile or Die in the UK), Living with a Wild God (2014) and Natural Causes (2018). Start with Nickel and Dimed, then follow her from work to wellness, war and belief.
Where to Start with Barbara Ehrenreich
If you want her defining book
→ Nickel and Dimed (2001) — three cities, a string of low-wage jobs, and the sums that never add up.
If you want her case against compulsory optimism
→ Bright-sided (2009) — from pink ribbons to the 2008 crash.
If you want her most personal book
→ Living with a Wild God (2014) — a teenage mystical experience, examined by a lifelong atheist.
If you want her early feminist history
→ For Her Own Good (1978) — 150 years of experts telling women how to live.
12 Barbara Ehrenreich Books, in Order
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses
A short pamphlet, written with Deirdre English, arguing that women healers were pushed out of medicine twice: by the European witch-hunts, and in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America by the rise of a licensed, male medical profession. First published as a pamphlet and reissued by the Feminist Press, it became a staple of the women’s health movement.
For Her Own Good
Her second book with Deirdre English traces how doctors, psychologists, child-rearing experts and home economists set themselves up as authorities on women’s lives from the nineteenth century to the 1970s, and how their advice changed with what the economy needed from women.
The Hearts of Men
Her first major solo book argues that men began walking away from the breadwinner role in the 1950s, before second-wave feminism, and follows that revolt through Playboy, the Beats, pop psychology and the men’s movement of the 1970s.
Fear of Falling
A study of the American professional middle class — doctors, lawyers, academics, journalists — whose status depends on education rather than property and has to be won again by each generation. Ehrenreich argues that this anxiety shaped how the class saw the poor and the working class, and helped push it to the right in the 1970s and 1980s.
Blood Rites
An attempt to explain why people experience war as something close to sacred. Ehrenreich looks for the roots in prehistory, when humans were prey for large predators, and in the rituals of blood sacrifice that followed, and then traces how those feelings were taken over by armies and nations.
Nickel and Dimed
Starting in 1998, after the 1996 welfare reform law, Ehrenreich took the jobs open to a woman without qualifications and tried to live on the pay: waitress and hotel housekeeper in Key West, house cleaner and nursing-home aide in Portland, Maine, and Wal-Mart sales clerk in Minneapolis. In each city she rented the cheapest room she could find, and in none did one job cover food and rent. It grew out of a Harper’s article that won the 2000 Sidney Hillman Award, became a New York Times bestseller, and was adapted for the stage by Joan Holden in 2002.
Bait and Switch
The white-collar companion to Nickel and Dimed. Ehrenreich spent months looking for a corporate job in public relations, paying career coaches and image consultants and working the networking events and job fairs of the unemployed middle class. She never found the job she was looking for.
Dancing in the Streets
A history of communal ecstatic celebration — ancient rites, carnival, festival and collective dance — and of how churches, states and the ideas of the Reformation pushed it to the margins of Western life. She closes with the places it survives, from rock concerts to sports crowds.
Bright-sided
Published in the UK as Smile or Die. It starts from her breast cancer treatment, when she found herself expected to treat the disease as a gift, the subject of her 2001 Harper’s essay “Welcome to Cancerland”. From there she follows positive thinking through motivational speakers, the prosperity gospel, corporate culture and positive psychology, and argues that it helped blind banks and homeowners to the risks behind the 2008 financial crisis.
Living with a Wild God
A memoir built on the journals she kept as a teenager, including an account of a mystical experience she had at seventeen, in 1959. Raised as an atheist and trained as a scientist, Ehrenreich tries in her seventies to work out what happened to her, without turning to the God of monotheism.
Natural Causes
Having decided she was old enough to die, Ehrenreich turns on preventive medicine, the fitness and wellness industries and the idea that the body can be controlled. She draws on her own background in cell biology, including research on immune cells that can help tumours grow, to argue that the body is not a harmonious machine.
Had I Known
Her last book: a selection of essays and journalism from four decades, including “Welcome to Cancerland”, grouped by her recurring subjects — poverty and class, men and women, health, science and religion. Kirkus wrote that her work “warrants renewed attention”.
In What Order to Read Barbara Ehrenreich
None of her books depends on another, so you can read by subject. The early books, several written with Deirdre English, are feminist histories of medicine and expertise; the middle books are about class, from the anxious professionals of Fear of Falling to the low-wage workers of Nickel and Dimed; the late books turn to belief, optimism and death.
Start with Nickel and Dimed and read Bait and Switch straight after: the second book repeats the experiment one rung up the ladder. Bright-sided and Natural Causes also belong together, since both take on the idea that attitude and discipline can control what happens to the body.
A reading path
1. Nickel and Dimed (2001)
2. Bait and Switch (2005)
3. Bright-sided (2009)
4. Natural Causes (2018)
5. Living with a Wild God (2014)
Everything Else Barbara Ehrenreich Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 11 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early and co-written books
6
6 books · 1969–1987
- 1969Long March, Short Springon the student uprisings of the 1960s, with John Ehrenreich
- 1970The American Health Empireon power and profit in US health care, with John Ehrenreich and Health PAC
- 1973Complaints and Disordersthe sexual politics of sickness, with Deirdre English
- 1983Women in the Global Factorywith Annette Fuentes
- 1986Re-Making Loveon the feminisation of sex, with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs
- 1987The Mean Seasonon the attack on the welfare state, with Fred Block, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven
Essay collections and journalism
4
4 books · 1990–2008
- 1990The Worst Years of Our Livesirreverent notes from the 1980s
- 1995The Snarling Citizenessays
- 2003Global Womannannies, maids and sex workers in the global economy, edited with Arlie Russell Hochschild
- 2008This Land Is Their Landreports from a divided nation
Fiction
1
1 book · 1993
- 1993Kipper’s Gameher only novel
The years · 1941–2022
Quick facts about Barbara Ehrenreich
- Known for
- Reporting on inequality from the inside — above all by taking low-wage jobs herself for Nickel and Dimed — and puncturing comfortable American beliefs about work, optimism and health.
- 1941
- Born in Butte, Montana
- 1968
- PhD, Rockefeller University
- 2001
- Nickel and Dimed
- 2022
- Dies in Alexandria, Virginia
- Born
- 26 August 1941, Butte, Montana, as Barbara Alexander
- Died
- 1 September 2022, Alexandria, Virginia, aged 81
- Education
- Reed College (1963); PhD in cellular immunology, Rockefeller University (1968)
- Worked
- Taught at SUNY Old Westbury (1971–1974), then wrote full-time for Ms., Mother Jones, Harper’s, Time and others
- Honours
- Sidney Hillman Award (2000), National Magazine Award (2002), Erasmus Prize (2018)
- Founded
- The Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which funds journalism by and about people in financial hardship
The red mark is 2001: Nickel and Dimed, the book that made her name beyond the left-wing magazines.
How Barbara Ehrenreich Writes: Going In, Doing the Sums
Her best-known method is immersion. For Nickel and Dimed she took the jobs, rented the rooms and kept the accounts, and the book is full of figures: the hourly wage, the weekly rent, what was left after food. In Bait and Switch she did the same with job coaches and networking events. She is open about her advantages — a car, start-up money, the knowledge that she could leave — and builds them into the test.
She wrote as a trained scientist. Blood Rites and Natural Causes draw on biology and anthropology, and she treats beliefs — that hard work pays, that a positive attitude cures cancer, that exercise can stop ageing — as claims to be checked against evidence. The tone is dry and often funny, aimed at the institutions that profit from those beliefs rather than at the people who hold them.
Her own life enters the argument when it is evidence: her breast cancer in Bright-sided, her teenage journals in Living with a Wild God, her decision to stop screening in Natural Causes. For writers who work the same seam, see Authors like Barbara Ehrenreich.
Watch
Barbara Ehrenreich on Nickel and Dimed
Ehrenreich talks about Nickel and Dimed and America's working poor at the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam in January 2005.
Frequently asked questions about Barbara Ehrenreich’s books
How many books did Barbara Ehrenreich write?
More than twenty. This page lists 23: the 12 key books above, from Witches, Midwives, and Nurses (1972) to Had I Known (2020), and 11 more, mostly co-written books and essay collections, plus her only novel, Kipper’s Game (1993).
What are Barbara Ehrenreich’s books in order?
The key books are Witches, Midwives, and Nurses (1972), For Her Own Good (1978), The Hearts of Men (1983), Fear of Falling (1989), Blood Rites (1997), Nickel and Dimed (2001), Bait and Switch (2005), Dancing in the Streets (2007), Bright-sided (2009), Living with a Wild God (2014), Natural Causes (2018) and Had I Known (2020).
What is the best Barbara Ehrenreich book to start with?
Nickel and Dimed. It is her best-known and most widely read book, and the clearest example of her undercover method. Read Bait and Switch next if you want the same experiment in white-collar work.
What is Barbara Ehrenreich’s most famous book?
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), her account of working as a waitress, hotel housekeeper, house cleaner, nursing-home aide and Wal-Mart clerk. It was a New York Times bestseller and is still widely assigned in schools and universities.
Did Barbara Ehrenreich train as a scientist before becoming a writer?
Yes. She studied chemistry at Reed College and took a PhD at Rockefeller University in 1968, in cellular immunology. She taught at the State University of New York at Old Westbury before leaving in 1974 to write full-time, and drew on her science in books such as Natural Causes.
Is Barbara Ehrenreich still alive?
No. She died on 1 September 2022, at a hospice in Alexandria, Virginia, a few days after her 81st birthday. Her daughter, Rosa Brooks, said the cause was a stroke.
Was Nickel and Dimed controversial?
Yes, in places. When the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assigned it to incoming students, a protest advertisement in the Raleigh News & Observer called it an “all-out assault on Christians, conservatives and capitalism” and described Ehrenreich as a radical socialist. Others questioned how far a middle-class writer with a car and savings could stand in for the working poor; she set out those advantages in the book itself.
What is the difference between Bright-sided and Smile or Die?
None: they are the same 2009 book. Bright-sided is the American title and Smile or Die the British one.
Has Nickel and Dimed been adapted?
Yes, for the stage. Joan Holden’s play Nickel and Dimed premiered in Seattle in 2002. Ehrenreich’s essay “Welcome to Cancerland” also inspired the 2011 documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc.
What is the Economic Hardship Reporting Project?
A non-profit Ehrenreich founded to pay for journalism about poverty and economic insecurity, often written by people who have lived it. It continues after her death.
Footnotes
- Barbara Ehrenreich — Wikipedia
- Barbara Ehrenreich dies at 81 — Kirkus Reviews, 2022
- Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, has passed away at 81 — Book Riot, 2022
- Ehrenreich, Barbara — Encyclopedia.com
- Barbara Ehrenreich on Nickel and Dimed — NPR, 2001
- Barbara Ehrenreich — New York State Literary Tree
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.”
— Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed (2001)
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