Snark Whatever. Apparently a lot of people really hate this book. I came across a lot of criticism of it, but very little of it actually dealt with the book itself instead of their perceptions of the book. I learned of this book, though I don’t recall this now, from reader the famous Gawker essay “On Smarm” by Tom Scocca that was making the rounds about 4 years ago. I am convinced from rereading big sections of it, especially the David Denby parts, that the […]
Job Hunting Is a Full-time Job and a Not Very Good One
I picked up Bait and Switch when my son was assigned Nickel and Dimed for a summer reading assignment. I wasn’t surprised by what Barbara Ehrenreich learned about white-collar unemployment in America, since I went through a stretch of long-term unemployment in 2011-2012. Even though this book was published way back in 2004, I think the costs, stresses and failures Ehrenreich encounters have only ramped up in intensity after 2009. As she did in Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich dropped herself into the trenches and created […]