BARBARA EHRENREICH

Bait and Switch

April 25 at 7:30pm · Mountainlair Gluck Theatre

One of our most recognized and original social commentators, author/journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has been a contributing writer for Time magazine since 1990. Her articles, reviews, essays, and humor have appeared in a range of national publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Ms., Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, Social Policy, Mirabella, as well as in newspapers throughout the world.

Ehrenreich received the Sydney Hillman Award for Journalism and a Brill’s Content “Honorable Mention” (April 1999) for a chapter of her current book and New York Times bestseller, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, which appeared in Harper's in January 1999. A second essay entitled “Maid to Order,” which grew out of her research for this book, was also published in Harper's (April 2000), where it generated so many letters that the magazine had to create a special section to accommodate them. Both articles drew widespread media interest.

A consistently acclaimed author, Ehrenreich was hailed as “brilliant” by the New York Review of Books and “fascinating” by Newsweek in their reviews of Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War(Metropolitan, 1997). A collection of her essays, The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed, was described by The New York Times as “elegant, trenchant, savagely angry, morally outraged, and outrageously funny.” Additionally, she is the author of Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, which was nominated for a National Book Critics' Award in 1989; The Snarling Citizen; The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment; The American Health Empire: Power, Profits and Politics, with John Ehrenreich; Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers; For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women, with Deirdre English; Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex, with Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs; The Mean Season: The Attack on Social Welfare, with Frances Fox Piven, Richard Cloward, and Fred Block; and a novel, Kipper’s Game.

Ehrenreich has received numerous grants and awards, including a Ford Foundation Award for Humanistic Perspectives on Contemporary Society (1982), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1987-88), and a grant for Research and Writing from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1995). She shared the National Magazine Award for Excellence in Reporting in 1980 and has received honorary degrees from Reed College, the State University of New York at Old Westbury, the College of Wooster in Ohio, and La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. In 1998 and in 2000 she taught essay writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at U.C. Berkeley, and is teaching in the women’s studies program at Brandeis this spring.

Widely known as a public speaker and a frequent radio and television talk show guest, Ehrenreich has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia, and has appeared on such national programs as the Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, Crossfire, Politically Incorrect, The Phil Donahue Show, Charlie Rose, and All Things Considered.