Bait and Switch

The bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for Americas ailing middle class what she did for the working poor

Barbara EhrenreichÂs Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible resume of a professional transition. She attempts to land a middle-class job undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then trawling a series of EST-like boot camps, job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She gets an image makeover, works to project a winning attitude, yet is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and again and again.