Barbara Ehrenreich

Un libro necesario para entender muchos aspectos psicológicos de la crisis económica y social que vivimos.Un ataque a la cultura del "yo lo valgo". Una llamada a la prudencia, a la responsabilidad individual y colectiva, y contra el pensamiento magico que ha popularizado la autoayuda en los ultimos años.Escrito por una de las autoras mas respetadas y carismaticas de Estados Unidos. Este libro ha suscitado una interesante controversia y ha tenido un gran exito en sus ediciones estadounidense, britanica y alemana.

¿Ha perdido su trabajo? Qué gran oportunidad de cambiar su trayectoria. ¿Tiene una grave enfermedad? Quizá a partir de hoy disfrute de su vida como nunca antes. ¿No le gusta su casa? Recorte de una revista el hogar soñado, mirelo a menudo y pronto estara viviendo alli. O pida un prestamo y comprese todo lo que desee. Y sobre todo, no deje de sonreir, agradecer a la vida sus regalos y sentirse lleno de optimismo.Alguien tenia que decir ¡basta! Y ha sido Barbara Ehrenreich, aguda e incisiva, protestona y esceptica, quien diga que el pensamiento positivo, la psicologia positiva y hasta la economia positiva son una dictadura. Y una broma de mal gusto. Y un peligro.En este libro desmitificador y realista, Ehrenreich pasa revista a la influencia que esta corriente de pensamiento ha tenido en la sociedad, la economia y la vida privada la moda positiva."Un libro que es un placer... llevaba toda la vida esperando a que alguien lo escribiera".- The New York Times Book Review"Perspicaz, inteligente y lleno de ingenio [...] con unas conclusiones muy interesantes".- BusinessWeek

Un libro necesario para entender muchos aspectos psicológicos de la crisis económica y social que vivimos.Un ataque a la cultura del"yo lo valgo". Una llamada a la prudencia, a la responsabilidad individual y colectiva, y contra el pensamiento magico que ha popularizado la autoayuda en los ultimos años.Escrito por una de las autoras mas respetadas y carismaticas de Estados Unidos. Este libro ha suscitado una interesante controversia y ha tenido un gran exito en sus ediciones estadounidense, britanica y alemana.

Explores the tyranny of positive thinking, and offers a history of how it came to be the dominant mode in the USA. This book argues passionately that the insistence on being cheerful actually leads to a lonely focus inwards, a blaming of oneself for any misfortunes, and thus to political apathy. It reveals the dark side of the nation.

Women have always been healers, and medicine has always been an arena of struggle between female practitioners and male professionals. This pamphlet explores two important phases in the male takeover of health care: the suppression of witches in medieval Europe and the rise of the male medical profession in the United States. The authors conclude that despite efforts to exclude them, the resurgence of women as healers should be a long-range goal of the women''s movement.

Is a publishing phenomenon that has sold more than two million copies. Funny, poignant, and passionate, this revelatory firsthand account of life in low-wage america-the story of Barbara Ehrenreich's attempts to eke out a living while working as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and wal-mart associate-has become an essential part of the national discourse. Now, in a new afterword, ehrenreich explains why, ten years on in America, Nickel and Dimed is more relevant than ever.

Una de las pensadoras sociales norteamericanas más agudas y originales decide ocultarse como trabajadora no cualificada para revelar el lado oscuro de la prosperidad estadounidense, recogiendo sus experiencias en trabajos poco remunerados, como parte de un trabajo de investigacion sobre las condiciones laborales de las clases pobres de Estados Unidos.Millones de estadounidenses trabajan a tiempo completo, todo el año, por un salario miserable. Ehrenreich, inspirada por la retorica liberal que promete que cualquier trabajo puede ser el pasaporte a una vida mejor, decidio experimentar el regimen de vida de estos trabajadores. ¿Como puede sobrevivir y mucho menos prosperar alguien, por seis dolares/hora? La autora dejo su casa, alquilo las habitaciones mas baratas y acepto cualquier trabajo que se le ofrecio. De Florida a Maine o Minnesota, trabajo como camarera de hotel, mujer de la limpieza, auxiliar de enfermeria y empleada de Wal-Mart: una odisea penosa, cargada de humor negro y de mil estratagemas desesperadas para sobrevivir en el sufrido terreno laboral norteamericano. Pronto descubrio que ningun trabajo es verdaderamente "no cualificado", hasta las mas humildes ocupaciones requieren un agotador esfuerzo mental y muscular. Y que un solo puesto de trabajo no es suficiente para salir adelante.

¿Para qué sirve cuidarse si nuestros cuerpos no son de fiar?Ehrenreich desmonta todas las manías que guían nuestros intentos por vivir una vida más larga y saludable, desde la importancia de las revisiones medicas preventivas hasta los conceptos de bienestar y mindfulness, desde las dietas de moda hasta la cultura del fitness.Las celulas tienen la costumbre de envejecer o volverse cancerigenas, demostrando una y otra vez que nuestros cuerpos tienden a tomar sus propias decisiones, y no siempre las toman a nuestro favor.Nos estamos matando para vivir mas tiempo, pero no mejor. Con el caustico sentido del humor que la caracteriza, Ehrenreich nos ofrece una alternativa: vivir bien, incluso con alegria, aceptando nuestra propia mortalidad.

From the celebrated author of Nickel and Dimed, an exploration of how we are killing ourselves to live longernot necessarily better."Sharp and fearless." Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City A razor-sharp polemic which offers an entirely new understanding of our bodies, ourselves, and our place in the universe, Natural Causes describes how we over-prepare and worry way too much about what is inevitable. One by one, Ehrenreich topples the shibboleths that guide our attempts to live a long, healthy lifefrom the importance of preventive medical screenings to the concepts of wellness and mindfulness, from dietary fads to fitness culture. But Natural Causes goes deeperinto the fundamental unreliability of our bodies and even our "mind-bodies," to use the fashionable term. Starting with the mysterious and seldom-acknowledged tendency of our own immune cells to promote deadly cancers, Ehrenreich looks into the cellular basis of aging, and shows how little control we actually have over it. We tend to believe we have agency over our bodies, our minds, and even over the manner of our deaths. But the latest science shows that the microscopic subunits of our bodies make their own "decisions," and not always in our favor. We may buy expensive anti-aging products or cosmetic surgery, get preventive screenings and eat more kale, or throw ourselves into meditation and spirituality. But all these things offer only the illusion of control. How to live well, even joyously, while accepting our mortalitythat is the vitally important philosophical challenge of this book. Drawing on varied sources, from personal experience and sociological trends to pop culture and current scientific literature, Natural Causes examines the ways in which we obsess over death, our bodies, and our health. Both funny and caustic, Ehrenreich then tackles the seemingly unsolvable problem of how we might better prepare ourselves for the endwhile still reveling in the lives that remain to us.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed comes a brave, frank, and exquisitely written memoir that will change the way you see the world. Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Educated as a scientist, she is an author, journalist, activist, and advocate for social justice. In Living With a Wild God, she recounts her quest-beginning in childhood-to find "the Truth" about the universe and everything else. In middle age, she rediscovered the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence, which records an event so strange, so cataclysmic, that she had never, in all the intervening years, written or spoken about it to anyone. It was the kind of event that people call a "mystical experience"and, to a steadfast atheist and rationalist, nothing less than shattering. In Living With a Wild God, Ehrenreich reconstructs her childhood mission, bringing an older womans wry and erudite perspective to a young girls impassioned obsession with the questions that, at one point or another, torment us all. The result is both deeply personal and cosmically sweeping-a searing memoir and a profound reflection on science, religion, and the human condition. With her signature combination of intellectual rigor and uninhibited imagination, Ehrenreich offers a true literary achievementa work that has the power not only to entertain but amaze."As personal a piece of writing as she has ever done ... A surprising turn for Ehrenreich, who for more than 40 years has been one of our most accomplished and outspoken advocacy journalists and activists." The Los Angeles Times

From the bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, an explanation of recent sexual culture and the loosening of marriage bonds in recent history. "Finally someone is offering a new, utterly plausible explanation...of loosening marriage bonds. According to Barbara Ehrenreich...it is men who started walking off, in search of freedom from their stifling role of breadwinner/success-machine. The shockand exhilarationof this book comes from the recognition that here is a woman who has dared to look beyond the everyday assumptions about love and commitment to examine which bonds between men and women can endure and which may last forever.--Vogue

Una de las pensadoras sociales norteamericanas más agudas y originales decide ocultarse como trabajadora no cualificada para revelar el lado oscuro de la prosperidad estadounidense, recogiendo sus experiencias en trabajos poco remunerados, como parte de un trabajo de investigacion sobre las condiciones laborales de las clases pobres de Estados Unidos.

This womens history classic brilliantly exposed the constraints imposed on women in the name of science and exposes the myths used to control them. Since the the nineteenth century, professionals have been invoking scientific expertise to prescribe what women should do for their own good. Among the experts diagnoses and remedies: menstruation was an illness requiring seclusion; pregnancy, a disabling condition; and higher education, a threat to long-term health of the uterus. From clitoridectomies to tame womens behavior in the nineteenth century to the censure of a generation of mothers as castrators in the 1950s, doctors have not hesitated to intervene in womens sexual, emotional, and maternal lives. Even domesticity, the most popular prescription for a safe environment for woman, spawned legions of scientific experts. Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre English has never lost faith in science itself, butinsist that we hold those who interpret it to higher standards. Women are entering the medical and scientific professions in greater numbers but as recent research shows, experts continue to use pseudoscience to tell women how to live. For Her Own Good provides todays readers with an indispensable dose of informed skepticism.

Este clássico dos estudos de gênero questiona a posição subalterna das mulheres nos cuidados de saúde na segunda metade do século XX. Para responder por que os médicos eram quase sempre homens e as m

¿Para qué sirve cuidarse si nuestros cuerpos no son de fiar?Ehrenreich desmonta todas las manías que guían nuestros intentos por vivir una vida más larga y saludable, desde la importancia de las revisiones medicas preventivas hasta los conceptos de bienestar y mindfulness, desde las dietas de moda hasta la cultura del fitness. Las celulas tienen la costumbre de envejecer o volverse cancerigenas, demostrando una y otra vez que nuestros cuerpos tienden a tomar sus propias decisiones, y no siempre las toman a nuestro favor.Nos estamos matando para vivir mas tiempo, pero no mejor. Con el caustico sentido del humor que la caracteriza, Ehrenreich nos ofrece una alternativa: vivir bien, incluso con alegria, aceptando nuestra propia mortalidad.