With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America's penchant for positive thinking. On a personal level, it leads to self-blame; on a national level, it's ushered in an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster.

America in the 'aughts — hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by one of the country's most prominent social critics Now in paperback, Barbara Ehrenreich's widely acclaimed This Land Is Their Land takes the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory and finds lurid extremes all around. While members of the moneyed elite have bought up congressmen, many in the working class can barely buy lunch. While a wealthy minority obsessively consumes cosmetic surgery, the poor often go without health care for their children. And while the Masters of the Universe have thrown themselves into the casino economy, the less fortunate have been fed a diet of morality, marriage, and abstinence. With perfect satiric pitch, Ehrenreich reveals a country scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty. Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation--including new and unpublished essays — confirm once again that Ehrenreich is, as the San Francisco Chronicle proclaims, essential reading.

«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 résumé 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 résumés—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 exposé of the cruel new reality in which we all now live.»

The authors present provocative new perspectives on female history, the history of American medicine and psychology, and the history of child-rearing unlike any other.