Barbara Ehrenreich's classic work of investigative journalism, first published in 2001, documents her experiment in surviving on minimum-wage jobs in America. Leaving behind her life as a writer, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress in Florida, a cleaning woman in Maine, and a Walmart associate in Minnesota, trying to answer a practical question: how do low-wage workers actually survive? Her answer is sobering: they often don't, trapped in cycles of debt, inadequate housing, and physical exhaustion that make escape nearly impossible. Ehrenreich captures the daily grind of work that is simultaneously exhausting and demeaning, the indignity of drug tests and surveillance, the impossibility of saving when rent consumes most of a paycheck. Her prose is sharp and often funny, even as she documents conditions that are anything but. The book helped spark a national conversation about inequality and remains relevant decades later, as wages for low-skill work have barely kept pace with inflation while costs of housing and healthcare have soared. This edition includes a new foreword by Matthew Desmond, whose own work on poverty has continued themes Ehrenreich pioneered. For anyone who wants to understand what life is actually like for the millions of Americans who stock shelves, clean buildings, and serve food, Ehrenreich's ground-level reporting remains essential.