Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class

Barbara Ehrenreich

Jan 2020 · Sold by Twelve

About this ebook

A brilliant and insightful exploration of the rise and fall of the American middle class by New York Times bestselling author, Barbara Ehrenreich.
One of Barbara Ehrenreich's most classic and prophetic works, Fear of Falling closely examines the insecurities of the American middle class in an attempt to explain its turn to the right during the last two decades of the 20th century.
Weaving finely-tuned expert analysis with her trademark voice, Ehrenreich traces the myths about the middle class to their roots, determines what led to the shrinking of what was once a healthy percentage of the population, and how, in its ambition and anxiety, that population has retreated from responsible leadership.
Newly reissued and timely as ever, Fear of Falling places the middle class of yesterday under the microscope and reveals exactly how we arrived at the middle class of today.

Ratings and reviews

Enlightening history of social trends that are seeing a revival, how the right wing feeds off of insecurity and genuine decline to fracture people's sense of their collective interest, a project now being rehashed by the likes of Dave Rubin, Jonathan Haidt, and the so-called Intellectual Dark Web. I wish I had read this in 2014.

About the author

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-2022) was a bestselling author and political activist, whose more than a dozen books include Natural Causes, Living with a Wild God, the award winning essay collection Had I Known, and Nickel and Dimed, which the New York Times described as “a classic in social justice literature.” An award-winning journalist, she frequently contributed to Harper's, The Nation, The New York Times, and TIME magazine. Ehrenreich was born in Butte, Montana, when it was still a bustling mining town. She studied physics at Reed College and earned a Ph.D. in cell biology from Rockefeller University. Rather than going into laboratory work, she got involved in activism, and soon devoted herself to writing her innovative journalism.