Barbara Ehrenreich
Barbara Ehrenreich is an American author and political activist who describes herself as a myth buster by trade, and has been called a veteran muckraker by The New Yorker. During the 1980s and early 1990s she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She is a widely read and awardwinning columnist and essayist, and author ofbooks. Ehrenreich is perhaps best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed On Getting By in America. A memoir of Ehrenreichs threemonth experiment surviving on minimum wage as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursinghome aide, and WalMart clerk, it was described by Newsweek magazine as jarring and full of riveting grit, and by The New Yorker as an expos putting human flesh on the bones of such abstractions as living wage and affordable housing.
Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town. In an interview on CSPAN, she characterized her parents as strong union people with two family rules never cross a picket line and never vote Republican. In a talk she gave in 1999, Ehrenreich called herself a fourthgeneration atheist.
Source: Wikipedia