Eye Opening (If You've Been Living in a Hole) NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA By Barbara Ehrenreich Henry Holt And Company, 230 pp., $13 (paperback) The back cover and the last chapter's 25-page evaluation are the most gripping parts of this memoir, which without a doubt originated as an attention-grabbing idea but turned out to be an obvious, repetitive, and unrealistic account of American blue-collar life. Barbara Ehrenreich sets off to do the "…showed first 75 words of 814 total…

…showed last 75 words of 814 total…she wanted a medal (and unfortunately got one) for doing what millions of people do every day, without bestseller to show for it. If you are oblivious towards how tedious most minimum wage jobs are, and cannot imagine that it would be hard fully supporting yourself on a $7/hr. salary, this book is definitely for you. However, if your head has not been in the sand for the past decade, save yourself 230 pages of reading.