World Famous Comics: This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation
This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation
By: Barbara Ehrenreich Publisher: Metropolitan Books Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Metropolitan Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 256 Publication Date: June 24, 2008 Release Date: June 24, 2008
America in the ’aughts—hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by the bestselling social critic hailed as “the soul mate”* of Jonathan Swift
Barbara Ehrenreich’s first book of satirical commentary, The Worst Years of Our Lives, about the Reagan era, was received with bestselling acclaim. The one problem was the title: couldn’t some prophetic fact-checker have seen that the worst years of our lives—far worse—were still to come? Here they are, the 2000s, and in This Land Is Their Land, Ehrenreich subjects them to the most biting and incisive satire of her career.
Taking the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory, Ehrenreich finds lurid extremes all around. While members of the moneyed elite can buy congressmen, many in the working class can barely buy lunch. While a wealthy minority obsessively consumes cosmetic surgery, the poor often go without health care for their children. And while the corporate C-suites are now nests of criminality, the less fortunate are fed a diet of morality, marriage, and abstinence. Ehrenreich’s antidotes are as sardonic as they are spot-on: pet insurance for your kids; Salvation Army fashions for those who can no longer afford Wal-Mart; and boundless rage against those who have given us a nation scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty.
Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation show once again that Ehrenreich is, as Molly Ivins said, “good for the soul.”
Ms Ehrenreich is the voice of our conscience, or should be. This collection of brief observations is pithy and to the point, and each one takes just a few minutes to read. But you should read slowly because otherwise the sudden rise in blood pressure they elicit may be harmful to your health. As I'm writing this, the economic collapses of late September are only emphasizing the points she makes regarding the mismanagement of America's economy and social systems -- mismanagement stemming from the absence of any sense of social conscience or responsibility in our national administration and our business and industry executives and the corporate cultures they foster.
Truth and astute observation, laced with sarcasm and wit I consider this one of Ehrenreich's masterpieces. Having read some of her other books, I am by now familiar with her style of delivery and her ability to convey her experience and observations in readily "digestible" form.
This short book is not short on information, warnings, observations, and truth. ON the one hand I found it highly informative -- on the other hand, I was struck by the disparity between "$$$$ Them $$$$" and "Us ($?)" -- BUT perhaps the tide is turning. And with that in mind, I hope that Ms. Ehrenreich takes a long hard look at what is going on in the economic sector right now (The Financial Meltdown - October 2008), and share her insights with us in another timely publication.
"Worst Years of Our Lives" Redux "Throughout the [insert decade],...Barbara Ehrenreich was making field notes: social, cultural, political, and economic. The notes appeared as short essays - elegant, trenchant, savagely angry, morally outraged and outrageously funny. The [insert number] essays collected here as [insert book name] sum up what Ms. Ehrenreich sees as the decade's salient features: blathering ignorance, smug hypocrisy, institutionalized fraud and vengeful polarization - all too dangerous to be merely absurd."
This blurb, a portion of which appears on the back book jacket of THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND, is actually taken from a 1990 New York Times review of Ms. Ehrenreich's 1990 work, THE WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, a rant against the 1980's. Yes, the savage anger is still there 18 years later, as is the moral outrage, but the funny is gone. Not that it matters, but two more of this book's blurbs come from reviews of the author's well-received NICKEL AND DIMED. Heaven only knows where the John Kenneth Galbraith blurb originates, but the great economist sadly passed away in 2006. Consider as well that Ms. Ehrenreich once rendered a gushing review of a Galbraith novel (yes, a novel!) entitled The Tenured Professor about which Library Journal commented with tongue firmly implanted in cheek, "...Galbraith shows that as a novelist, he is a fine economist."
What lies between the front and back covers of this book is a series of 62 vignettes, nearly all of a uniform, three-page length. They are grouped into larger topic areas: inequality, mean-spiritedness, squeezing the middle class, workplace follies and inequities, health care, gender politics, and religion. Most of them read like Op Ed opinion pieces from a major metropolitan newspaper columnist, usually ending with a satirical comment that often loops back to the opening sentences for a more dramatic closure. Ms. Ehrenreich makes no bones about her liberal leanings, and readers of a similar persuasion (myself one of them) will likely find themselves nodding in agreement at both her assertions and her sense of outrage.
Unfortunately, THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND emerges as not much more than a loosely-knit collection of short, caustic diatribes. It is a Dennis Miller rant or an episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher" (minus their humor) rendered in book form - entertaining for a few minutes with biting satire and self-righteous indignation, preaching to the choir exactly what they want to hear - but all hot air. There's nothing to show after the show beyond empty resignation and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. A trail of cynicism and bitterness flows from the book like smoldering ashes, but little detail and nothing prescriptive emerges. Within hours of finishing, not one of the 62 "chapterlets" was memorable enough to recall in any but the vaguest of ways.
I adored NICKEL AND DIMED (2000) and cheered Ms. Ehrenreich for her near-total immersion into the world of blue-collar work. Her next field-research-through-lived-experience effort, BAIT AND SWITCH (2005), fell somewhat short of the mark but still yielded some fascinating insights in areas that even the author herself might not have anticipated. Now, in this most recent book, she leaves her well-trod path for one that allows her freedom to vent on nearly everything. The result not only fails to satisfy, it may leave even left-of-center readers feeling sullied and dispirited. What THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND regrettably shows is that (to paraphrase the Library Journal commentary above) as an essayist, Ms. Ehrenreich is a fine observer and reporter of the lived experience of everyday Americans. Her greatest strength and most effective moral suasion comes in telling the memorable stories of real American people and their daily struggles -- for human dignity and against large institutions. One hopes that she will return soon to that well-trod but far more engaging path.
What would Ehrenreich do if the 'rich' opted out Why is it that I always get the sneaking suspicion that when Robin Hoods like Ehrenreich talk about the 'rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer' she has in mind a great big tax increase? What would happen if all those nasty rich people just opted out and took their compensation off-shore, in the form of long term share grants? I am not an uncritical fan of Ayn Rand, nor do I consider myself 'rich' - but gosh, when I keep reading about the nasty rich people (read: sucessful risk takers who already pay virtually all of the taxes in this country), I can't help but ask - Who is John Galt? You're poor and want to improve your situation? I would suggest that you get an education, put off having children until you can afford them, live within your means and save your money. Apparently that is too simple and smells of a Protestant work ethic. Gotta find those scapegoats.
timely and powerful a powerful, insightful, yet human and humorous insight into the events and politics of our times. a concise critique of the real power brokers in the u.s. that are making the our nation feared and hated throughout the world. a strong call to oust the bush regime and his followers (mccain et al) and wij back our country.
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