This is a rollicking fictional memoir that takes us through the ups and downs of the mysterious author's life. And what a life it is, full to the brim with every imaginable kind of neurotic behavior. You will often laugh out loud. But you will also learn a great deal about the emotions and about which emotional strategies work and which don't.

The New York Times bestselling work of undercover reportage from our sharpest and most original social critic, with a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job—any job—can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors. Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity—a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. And now, in a new foreword, Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, explains why, twenty years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.

How ambitious are you for your children to think independently, trust themselves, enjoy what they do, and achieve their goals? Do you want them to be successful, self-confident, and yet not entitled? Undoubtedly, the answer is yes. Most of us are not taught to parent or have been poorly parented ourselves, so how can we expect to parent well? In order to overcome this “parenting education deficit,” struggling parents often turn to books but end up with a pile next to their beds, each one describing only a small portion of what they require. Well, here’s a book that provides answers, the How do we do this? It covers care-giving from the womb all the way to when the child is ready to leave home. Inside, you’ll find well researched facts, revelatory tips, active practices to apply, and a huge array of examples, processes, and procedures on how to be the parent you want to be. What’s more, it’s a set of guidelines and tools you can give to any of your child’s caregivers as a manual to follow on how you’d like your children to be raised when you’re not around. In the style of the old computer manuals, in which a table of contents shows you where to look for what you need, The Practice of Parenting is a one-stop shop to help parents and caregivers resolve the myriad of issues they will encounter in child care, while providing a multitude of ways to help them cope. For bulk sales and interest please see www.practiceofparentingmanual.com

Who am I and where do I come to write this book? I feel it necessary to address all aspects of motherhood, so I decided to include both the sweetness and delight plus the shadow side of motherhood in this book. Some challenging life situations occur that are vital for us to consider, so I am including some disquieting statistics. Because many women (and men) have refrained from checking within themselves or making an examination on emotional, mental, physical and spiritual planes about having children, hardships have been created, both personally and planetary.