Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream Paperback | Pages: 248 pages

Itemize Books As Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Original Title:	Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
ISBN:	0805081240 (ISBN13: 9780805081244)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Barbara Ehrenreich, Patrick Knowles, Leah Gray, Laiman Godel, John D. Wise, Laurie Wise, Rev. Jack Rilger, Tom Chang, Jim Lukasewski, Donna Eudovique, Jeff Clement, Hillary Meister, Dean Gottschalk

Commentary Concering Books Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

The New York Times bestselling investigation into white-collar unemployment from "our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism"--The New York Times Book Review Americans' working lives are growing more precarious every day. Corporations slash employees by the thousands, and the benefits and pensions once guaranteed by "middle-class" jobs are a thing of the past. In Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich goes back undercover to explore another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with the plausible resume of a professional "in transition," she attempts to land a "middle-class" job. She submits to career coaching, personality testing, and EST-like boot camps, and attends job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and--again and again--rejected. Bait and Switch highlights the people who have done everything right--gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes--yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster. There are few social supports for these newly disposable workers, Ehrenreich discovers, and little security even for those who have jobs. Worst of all, there is no honest reckoning with the inevitable consequences of the harsh new economy; rather, the jobless are persuaded that they have only themselves to blame. Alternately hilarious and tragic, Bait and Switch, like the classic Nickel and Dimed, is a searing expose of the cruel new reality in which we all now live.

Specify Containing Books Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Title	:	Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Author	:	Barbara Ehrenreich
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 248 pages
Published	:	July 25th 2006 by St. Martin's Press (first published August 19th 2005)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. Sociology. Politics. Economics. Business

Rating Containing Books Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Ratings: 3.48 From 4500 Users | 557 Reviews

Write Up Containing Books Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

While the previous book, "Nickel & Dimed", was revelatory and more significant piece of journalism, I can't say the same thing for "Bait and Switch." In pursuing her next book - she decides to pick a profession she knows little about and FAKE IT. She thinks so little of the corporate world that she thinks that they won't be able to tell. And then - she proceeds to pursue a whole lot of worthless job searching techniques that most unemployed people don't find useful.On top of that - even as

From a blog post I wrote in 2006:I was looking forward to reading Barbara Ehrenreich's latest tome, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. I really enjoyed Nickel and Dimed in which the author took on several minimum wage type jobs and tried to live on her salary. Her latest effort is a look at what the white collar folks go through when they get laid off/fired from their relatively high paying jobs.It wasn't the story I thought it would be. I expected her to go through

Barbara Ehrenreich in this book explores the scary world of white collar unemployment and the transition industry. That is a euphemism for the business of helping white collar job seekers. Its a world of job coaches, head hunters, job seminars, job seeker boot camps, job fairs, and Christian support groups for job seekers (some taking the opportunity to proselytize). She describes passing encounters with sham job offers that advertise being your own boss or get rich quick. At one point she is

While I didn't agree with all of the points raised in Nickel & Dimed, I enjoyed it. I wish I could say the same for this book. Maybe I took things a bit too personally but working in public relations I was insulted that Barbara thinks she can easily step into a director's position in PR with a made up resume and absolutely no contacts in the industry. But she approaches every "adventure" in job searching with snobbish disdain. I agree that it's hard for people to find jobs in America and

Ugh. This book was a whole lot of nothing. She did not take the project seriously or make a proper effort at getting a middle class sort of a job. To top it off, her tone was extremely smug. For someone clueless, she had no right to think she had it all figured out. It wasn't until the very end of her project, when I'm sure the book was due to her publishers, that she realized she may have made some serious mistakes along the way. I wish she'd started all over at that point and tried again and

Although this book was published in 2005, I didn't read it until 2010. If I had read it in 2005, I might not have related to it so intensely, as I did in 2009 when I was laid off for the first time. I would get laid off twice more before landing stable employment again in 2012. Back in 2005 I was smug, fully insulated from the severity of unemployment, never having been out of a job since I got my first part-time job at 16, working at the mall. This turned into paid internships at prestigious

According to the books introduction, Ehrenreich decided to investigate the claim that white collar, mid-level employees were exploited by their employers and the corporate culture. As she did with entry level work in Nickeled and Dimed, she set out to infiltrate this world as an undercover journalist by getting this type of job. However, with a falsified resume designed to hide her identity, she spends the entire book in the job search process. The tone of this book is not that of an objective