Bait And Switch

Barbara Ehrenreich

Intrigued by reports of increasing poverty and despair within America’s white-collar corporate workforce, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to infiltrate their world as an undercover reporter and learn about the problems facing middle-class executives at first hand. Thinking she had set herself an easy challenge, the author was quite unprepared for what happened next. Ehrenreich found herself entering a shadowy world of Internet job searches, lonely networking events and costly career-coaching sessions, a world in which ‘professional’ mentors and trainers offer pop-psychology and self-help mantras to desperate would-be employees. Her story is an important one – poignant and blackly funny – that delivers a stark warning about the future that faces corporate employees everywhere and calls for collective action to guard against it.

Ehrenreich is the kind of reporter who could be put down just about anywhere and always come up with revelations and perceptions of the society around her, its people, their hopes and fears...Razor-sharp

Guardian

A compelling exploration of the human cost of the flexible labour market and the culture of shareholder value that have become the hallmarks of modern business

Irish Times

A view of the homeland made memorable by Ehrenreich's superb reporting and analytical skills

TLS

The Author

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of fifteen books, including the bestselling Smile or Die and Nickel and Dimed. She has written for Time, Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine and various British newspapers including The Times and the Guardian. She lives in Virginia, USA.