Had I Known: Collected Essays

by Barbara Ehrenreich

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455543694
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	03/23/2021
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	643,377
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022) was a bestselling author and political activist, whose more than a dozen books include Natural Causes, Living with a Wild God, the award winning essay collection Had I Known, and Nickel and Dimed, which the New York Times described as “a classic in social justice literature.” An award-winning journalist, she frequently contributed to Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Haves and Have-Nots

Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America 3

How You Can Save Wall Street 47

S&M As Public Policy 51

Going to Extremes: CEOs vs. Slaves 55

Are Illegal Immigrants the Problem? 58

What's So Great about Gated Communities? 62

Is It Now a Crime to be Poor? 66

A Homespun Safety Net 73

Dead, White, and Blue: The Great Die-Off of Americas Blue-Collar White People 80

Health

Welcome to Cancerland 89

The Naked Truth about Fitness 121

Got Grease? 128

Our Broken Mental Health System 133

Liposuction: The Key to Energy Independence 137

The Selfish Side of Gratitude 140

Men

How "Natural" Is Rape? 147

The Warrior Culture 151

At Last, a New Man 155

Patriarchy Deflated 176

Women

Are Women Getting Sadder? Or Are We All Just Getting a Lot More Gullible? 183

Our Neighborhood Porn Committee 189

Strategies of Corporate Women 193

What Abu Ghraib Taught Me 203

Making Sense of la Difference 208

Outclassed: Sexual Harassment Alissa Quart 212

God, Science, and Joy

Mind Your Own Business 219

The Animal Cure 229

The Missionary Position 241

The New Creationism: Biology Under Attack Janet McIntosh 253

Up Close at Trinidad's Carnival 265

The Humanoid Stain 273

Bourgeois Blunders

Family Values 293

The Cult of Busyness 304

Death of a Yuppie Dream John Ehrenreich 309

The Unbearable Being of Whiteness 319

Is the Middle Class Doomed? 323

Welcome to Fleece U. 339

Prewatched TV 343

The Recessions Racial Divide Dedrick Muhammad 346

Divisions of Labor 354

Throw Them Out with the Trash: Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue 362

Acknowledgments 369

Index 373

About the Author 383

Editorial Reviews

Barbara Ehrenreich has committed her life to writing in defense of women, immigrants, people of color, people in the LGBTQ+ community, people who are homeless, minimum-wage workers, and those who can’t even aspire to that luxury. Often prescient, her essays in this latest collection span several decades, explaining how we got to where we are today. A brave and brilliant thinker, she is most remarkable for reminding us how to be human in savage times. HAD I KNOWN is a dazzling tribute to Ehrenreich’s unwavering commitment to that cause, her mastery of craft, and an expansive and exceptional career centering on the art of the essay.”—PEN Awards

"The strange and frightening world we suddenly find ourselves living in is one Ehrenreich has warned about for decades...Her scathing take feels all but prophetic now."—The Washington Post

"Ehrenreich's work is appealing for its fiery focus on social injustice... striking for [its] foresight...[and] a reminder that Ehrenreich's writing is just plain fun to read, thanks to her acerbic wit and spirited grumpiness."—GQ

"[HAD I KNOWN is] a one-stop shop for fans of Ehrenreich's gimlet eye and informed outrage...A rewarding, illuminating tour de force."—Booklist

"[Ehrenreich's] significant research is conveyed in a wry, taut polemical style...[She] chillingly foresaw the devastation of labor and the middle class...and the increased cruelty of law enforcement toward the vulnerable...With such relevance to fractured late-capitalist America, Ehrenreich's work warrants renewed attention."—Kirkus Reviews

this argumentative and passionate collection...challenges the status quo throughout, while also including a healthy dose of self-questioning. She is wittily satirical at times...and bitterly Swiftian at others. Gripping."—Publishers Weekly

PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR BARBARA EHRENREICH


"Ehrenreich's sharp and fearless take on mortality privileges joy over juice fasts and argues that, regardless of how many hours we spend in the gym, death wins out. An incisive, clear-eyed polemic, Natural Causes relaxes into the realization that the grim reaper is considerably less grim than a life spent in terror of a fate that awaits us all."—Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Evicted

"Throughout the text, [Ehrenreich] employs the erudition that earned her degree, the social consciousness that has long informed her writing, and the compassion that endears her to her many fans...A powerful text that floods the mind with illumination-and with agonizing questions."—Kirkus (starred review)

"The factor that makes each of [Barbara's] books so completely unique in American intellectual life is her persistent sensitivity to matters of social class. She can always see through the smokescreen, the cloud of fibs we generate to make ourselves feel better about a world where the work of the many subsidizes the opulent lifestyles of the few. That, plus the fact that she writes damned well. Better than almost anyone out there, in fact."—Salon

"Barbara Ehrenreich is a singular voice of sanity amid our national obsession with wellness and longevity. She is deeply well-informed about contemporary medical practices and their shortcomings, but she wears her learning lightly. Natural Causes is a delightful as well as an enlightening read. No one who cares about living (or dying) well can afford to miss it."—Jackson Lears, PhD, Editor in Chief of the Raritan Quarterly Review

"[Ehrenreich] resolutely avoids rhetoric in that 'blubbery vein'—which is why her book is such a rare feat...She struggles to make sense of the epiphany without recourse to the 'verbal hand-wavings about mystery and transcendence' that go with the territory... Ehrenreich has no interest in conversion...She wants, and inspires, open minds."—The Atlantic

"Ehrenreich has always been an intellectual and a journalistic badass... [She] ultimately arrives at a truce with the idea of God. You'll admire her journey."—Entertainment Weekly

From the Publisher

…[Had I Known] shows how Ehrenreich's sincere activist efforts have always contained a vein of dark wit…There's a consistent tone to all of the essays: tough and acerbic, crusty to the point of imperturbable…The Ehrenreich of this collection is Ehrenreich the activist, the author of startlingly prescient essays and scabrous op-eds. She was writing about the splintering middle class during the self-congratulatory Reagan years, and about problems of trickle-down feminism long before well-heeled women were exhorted to lean in.

The New York Times - Jennifer Szalai

12/16/2019

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.)

Publishers Weekly

02/01/2020

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

Library Journal

Narrator Suzanne Toren does a masterful job of capturing a distinctive authorial voice in this wide-ranging essay collection. Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has been commenting on social, political, and economic life in the U.S. for more than four decades. Her work is represented here through a thematic compilation across that timespan. Toren’s narration is laced with acerbic wit and sly humor, which pair perfectly with Ehrenreich’s sharply observant writing. Toren smoothly shifts from the gravitas of grim topics to genuine enthusiasm for the triumphs and simple joys that come despite tough circumstances. Toren’s insightful interpretations engage listeners with what might have been a rote recitation of facts. For extra fun, put your listening device on shuffle and see what essay pops up. N.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2020 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

Narrator Suzanne Toren does a masterful job of capturing a distinctive authorial voice in this wide-ranging essay collection. Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has been commenting on social, political, and economic life in the U.S. for more than four decades. Her work is represented here through a thematic compilation across that timespan. Toren’s narration is laced with acerbic wit and sly humor, which pair perfectly with Ehrenreich’s sharply observant writing. Toren smoothly shifts from the gravitas of grim topics to genuine enthusiasm for the triumphs and simple joys that come despite tough circumstances. Toren’s insightful interpretations engage listeners with what might have been a rote recitation of facts. For extra fun, put your listening device on shuffle and see what essay pops up. N.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2020 Best Audiobook © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

2020-01-12
A compilation of the polemics and journalism of Ehrenreich, showcasing her stylistic evolution and social prescience.

The author is well known for her barbed magazine pieces and bestselling books (most notably, Nickel and Dimed), but she earned her chops as a freelancer. In the introduction, she reflects on this, noting how the literary economy that allowed her to establish her career has become atomized and unstable: "Though I didn't see it at first, the world of journalism as I had known it was beginning to crumble around me….I saw my own fees at one major news outlet drop to one-third of their value between 2004 and 2009." In a sense, Ehrenreich's work has always been mournful, mostly for the traditions of social justice and collective organizing so ruthlessly attacked since the Ronald Reagan administration. The author stayed prolific even after her hardcover success, and this collection is sprawling, packed into sections such as "Haves and Have-Nots," "Bourgeois Blunders," and "God, Science, and Joy." The chapter titles are often provocative ("Going to Extremes: CEOs vs. Slaves," "S&M as Public Policy," "The Unbearable Being of Whiteness"), and her significant research is conveyed in a wry, taut polemical style. Prominent topics include the brutalization of poor people ("if poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that criminalization inexorably impoverishes them"), the absurdities of the mental health system, and pervasive misunderstandings about gender and power (on Abu Ghraib: "I never believed that women were innately gentler and less aggressive than men"). While some earlier work may seem dated—e.g., essays on the grating 1980s yuppie ethos—others chillingly foresaw the devastation of labor and the middle class, the privatization of social services, and the increased cruelty of law enforcement toward the vulnerable. Memorably, Ehrenreich reflects on her own working-class roots as the "source of much of my radicalism, feminism, and, by the standards of the eighties, all-around bad attitude."

With such relevance to fractured late-capitalist America, Ehrenreich's work warrants renewed attention.

Kirkus Reviews