Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class

by Barbara Ehrenreich

Book Overview

A brilliant and insightful exploration of the rise and fall of the American middle class by New York Times bestselling author, Barbara Ehrenreich.One of Barbara Ehrenreich's most classic and prophetic... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060973331
• ISBN13: 9780060973339
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

She is a genius

I really learned so much from this book. The unfortunate thing is that she wrote it in 1989 and I don't think she's planning another one... but it's amazing to just read the history from the perspecive of a person in 1989. She spots some very bad trends in corporate america / industrial society which have subsequently worsened now that it's 15 years later. A lot of her predictions (or subtle suggestions at what might go wrong) have come true - and it's not surprising because her hypotheses and analyses are based on solid data. There was some passage where she talked about CEOs getting paid absurd salaries like 650k and she didn't see an end to the rise... well, she hit that nail on the head. In "nickel and dimed" you really heard her voice, but this book is very very factual - and she interjects with her everpresent wit now & again - but not as often as her recent work. Her writing style is an absolutely beautiful combination of wry wit, confidence, vast intelligence, humor, and deep understanding of the issues (through research). I would LOVE to read a 2004 version of this book but I don't know if it's top of mind for her these days. Either way - you still learn a lot from this book. I love it. I wish I were a sociology major in college now so I'd have someone to talk about this book with! It's DEFINITELY worth finding someone with an out of print copy to buy from. The book is priceless.

A thoughtful rumination on the American class system

It's very easy for a book on a topic like this to be a lot of fluff, facts molded to fit perhaps outdated ideological frameworks and that sort of thing. This book is not like that, it's a thoughtful analysis of the American "professional-managerial middle class" in the late 20th century. It was also not a boring read, at least not for me. Whether she has analyzed things correctly or not I don't know, she does have some good insights and I agree with her judgements on certain topics like on the "silent majority". I also enjoyed her book "Nickled and Dimed". Thomas Frank of The Baffler gives very high praise for this book, I think he even said everything he has written after reading it is just footnotes to this book. He is a good writer as well so that is quite a compliment.

Piercing the narrative, telling the truth

I hope that with the success of her acid dipped expose of what's really going on in the marketplace of the working poor( Nickel and Dimed) all of Barbara Ehrenreich's books will be back in print because she is a species of writer on the verge of extinction. Unabashedly pro union and anti compassionate conservatism and faith based charity and decidedly not glamorous in her pursuit of topics and people to interview she does the grind work of looking statistics in the eye and debunking some of our more vigorously pandered myths. This volume in particular does a fantastic job in holding a mirror up to the paranoias and greed of the middle class who suspects every contrarian to be after what they have accrued and fenced in and considers its possessions and spouses( is that one category or two?) its natural born right as long as the community is drawn with an infantile crayon and nobody knows who works the sewers.It illustrates a society where everyone wants to purchase their own fringes of good taste, the rich beg more than the poor because they can always afford the bail for atonement and where every transgression spawns a fresh bombardment of analysts trying to mine the national soul, subtlety is never profitable medicine and the chosen few worry about the calories in walnut raspberry dressing. In the honored tradition of Studs Terkel Ms Ehrenreich points out that there is one airwave for the brash winners, the losers of all stripes remain unseen unless they are truly interesting criminals but the large portion of the silent middle class is stuck in a morass of anger, fear and wall building to leave everybody out who can't be labelled with a corporate golf pass, a church membership or a Neiman Marcus preferred customer I.D. The result is that they have mortgaged about every particle of their humanity to one vendor or another.

The truth hurts

Right on the money sad but true.Well researched and documented. Should make people think about the world we are creating. It's too bad the people who won't read this book are the ones that should. We take too much and give too little.

insightful & important analysis of U.S. class stratification

This is exactly the kind of sociology text that every person in America, those in the middle class in particular, should read and discuss. Barbara Ehrenrich does a fascinating and completely absorbing job of tracing, explaining and analyzing the history/rise of the professional middle class in America from post-WWII through the Reagan Era. She also points out quite perceptively how pervasive middle class ethos are in shaping our culture, politics and the media, and how as a result the working poor, who constitute the majority of U.S. citizens, are often ill-defined and underserved. Her thoughts on everything from the media to student revolts to yuppies to the fitness craze are razor sharp, in addition to being a very telling mirror to hold up to America's excess and increasing social stratification. I sincerely hope that Ehrenreich decides to update this book and look at this last decade of our social/class history. A must read.