This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

by Barbara Ehrenreich

Book Overview

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 description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805088407
• ISBN13: 9780805088403
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Length: 235 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Fast Easy Read

This book is very informative and a fast read. Every chapter is about 2 pages but filled with facts. It is an easy read and makes a good bedtime book because you can read a few pages and you've covered a few topics. After I read this book, I gave it to my sister to read and she thought it was very interesting and well written. My sister isn't into politics so I think this is a good book that will inform all sorts of readers about what is going on in our world today.

Their land

Well-written, humorous, on-the-money, fair critical assessment, witty, captivating, enjoyable- definitely recommend. After reading this book, I ordered 2 other books by the author.

Scathingly funny-and enraging

I laughed as I read this, and also got angry. It will make anyone laugh and cry at the current state of the country. Barbara Ehrenreich is spot on in assessing where the country is going, and how most Americans are not benefiting.

Depressing, but a must read book

When I told my husband that Barbara Ehrenreich's This Land is Their Land was a depressing book, he said that's because it's true. He told me not to read reality-based books if it's going to depress me. Barbara Ehrenreich is the bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, and Bait and Switch. She can call this book satirical commentary, but it's sad that her points about our government, our health care system, and our work force are actually right on target. Early on, she says that we've changed from a country where we felt we were all in it together, to one where the philosophy is closer to "I've got mine." She actually says, "Let the environment decay, the infrastructure crumble, the public hospitals close, the schools get by on bake sales, the workers drop from exhaustion - who cares?" We're now a nation of the haves and the have-nots, and more and more of us are becoming have-nots. Ehrenreich points out that people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their health care, and no one is speaking up. Why aren't people complaining? We're letting our government and our businesses, such as Wal-Mart, control the country. And, they do a very good job of distracting us from the bad conditions in this country by pointing us in the direction of side issues, such as gay marriage and pro-life and pro-choice disagreements. She isn't the first one to say that illegal immigration is the latest distraction. "But it wasn't a Mexican who took away your pension or sold you on a dodgy mortgage." We're afraid for our jobs. We're afraid to lose our houses and our health care. It's not the first time in our country's history that a minority group has been selected as a scapegoat to distract us from the actual social conditions in this country. The dictionary defines satire as "The use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc." Barbara Ehrenreich successfully uses sarcasm to do all of those things. She exposes the vices, follies and deceit behind our business practices, our health care practices, and our employment. She does a wonderful job in ridiculing our fascination with business success books, when the only people getting rich are the authors of those trite books. We could all take lessons from This Land is Their Land in denouncing the wrongs in this country. I hope that Barbara Ehrenreich's This Land is Their Land is as successful as Nickel and Dimed. It's another important book, by a very important author. This book needs to be read, and discussed. Most of all, we need to take some action to change ourselves, and our country, before it's too late.

A Wake-Up Call for America

America is in big trouble, asserts Ehrenreich. Greed is in the saddle and rides roughshod over democratic principles. The rich are getting richer; the poor are getting poorer; a once-healthy middle class has become an endangered species. Whether writing of "Chasms of Inequality," "Meanness on the Rise," "Strangling the Middle Class," "Hell Day at Work," "Declining Health," "Getting Sex Straight," or "False Gods," Ehrenreich pulls no punches, gives no quarter, takes no captives. The most serious threats to a deep morality, argues Ehrenhreich, are not abortionists, stem cell researchers, or matrimonially minded gays, but those who wage an unnecessary war and ruthlessly oppress the poor. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Pat Robertson will hate this book. Many grossly overpaid corporate CEO's and HMO bigwigs won't care much for it either. One need not be a devotee of Karl Marx's Das Kapital to perceive (unless one is willfully blind) the dark underside of capitalism, which thrives on the cynical creed: "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost!" Is Ehrenreich's book agitprop or solid sociopolitical criticism? The reader's reaction will depend on his or her political stance. I believe This Land Is Their Land is right on point: a devastating critique of capitalism run amok. It's a wake-up call concerning the looting and fleecing of America. If Ehrenreich sounds angry, outraged, and fighting mad, it's because she is. Hers is a righteous indignation against those who are destroying everything that moral and compassionate people hold dear. Like an ancient prophet, she issues scathing indictments against plutocrats who trample on the poor. In her book one hears the thunderous voice of Amos: "Let justice roll on like a mighty river and righteousness like an everflowing stream." An excerpt from the book: "How many 'wake-up calls' do we need, people--how many broken lives, drowned cities, depleted food pantries, people dead for lack of ordinary health care? We approach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century in a bleak landscape cluttered with boarded-up homes and littered with broken dreams. . . . Why don't we dare say it? The looting of America has gone on too long, and the average American is too maxed out, overworked, and overspent to have anything left to take. We'll need a new deal, a new distribution of power and wealth, if we want to restore the beautiful idea that was 'America.'"