Background
Ehrenreich, Barbara was born on August 26, 1941 in Butte, Montana, United States. Daughter of Ben Howes and Isabelle (Oxley) Alexander.
( From prescribing the "rest cure" to diagnosing hysteria...)
From prescribing the "rest cure" to diagnosing hysteria, the medical profession has consistently treated women as weak and pathological. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English's concise history of the sexual politics of medical practices shows how this biomedical rationale was used to justify sex discrimination throughout the culture, and how its vestiges are evident in abortion policy and other reproductive rights struggles today. Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of many bestselling books, including Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Deirdre English, former editor of Mother Jones magazine, is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558616950/?tag=2022091-20
( America in the 'aughts--hilariously skewered, brilliant...)
America in the 'aughts--hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by one of the country's most prominent social critics Now in paperback, Barbara Ehrenreich's widely acclaimed This Land Is Their Land takes the measure of what we are left with after the cruelest decade in memory and finds lurid extremes all around. While members of the moneyed elite have bought up congressmen, many in the working class can barely buy lunch. While a wealthy minority obsessively consumes cosmetic surgery, the poor often go without health care for their children. And while the Masters of the Universe have thrown themselves into the casino economy, the less fortunate have been fed a diet of morality, marriage, and abstinence. With perfect satiric pitch, Ehrenreich reveals a country scarred by deepening inequality, corroded by distrust, and shamed by its official cruelty. Full of wit and generosity, these reports from a divided nation--including new and unpublished essays--confirm once again that Ehrenreich is, as the San Francisco Chronicle proclaims, "essential reading."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805090150/?tag=2022091-20
(Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed ...)
Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called "wise women" by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.... The suppression of female healers by the medical establishment was a political struggle, first in that it is part of the history of sex struggle in general... second, in that it was part of a class struggle.... This pamphlet represents a beginning of the research which will have to be done to recapture our history as health workers.... To know our history is to begin to see how to take up the struggle again. --- excerpts from book's Introduction
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AJYA4AI/?tag=2022091-20
(What draws our species to war and makes us see it as a ki...)
What draws our species to war and makes us see it as a kind of sacred undertaking? In Blood Rites, renowned social critic Barbara Ehrenreich plumbs the mystery of the human attraction to violence. In this sweeping work, she takes us on an original journey from the grasslands of prehistoric Africa to the trenches of Verdun, from the spectacular human sacrifices of pre-colonial Central America to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century 'total war'. Ehrenreich traces the evolution of war from prehistoric forms of socially-sanctioned violence to the mass religion we know today as nationalism, and shows the persistence of ancient fears in the most modern rituals and passions of war. Brillant in conception, rich in detail, epic in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that will transform our understanding of the archaic practice that has become the biggest single threat to human life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1860495699/?tag=2022091-20
( A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with ...)
A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a "positive" people--cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to "prosper" you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of "positive psychology" and the "science of happiness." Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes--like mortgage defaults--contributed directly to the current economic crisis. With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America's penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out "negative" thoughts. On a national level, it's brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best--poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805087494/?tag=2022091-20
( Women have always been healers, and medicine has alw...)
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.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0912670134/?tag=2022091-20
( As we watch another agonizing attempt to shift the futu...)
As we watch another agonizing attempt to shift the future of health care in the United States, we are reminded of the longevity of this crisis, and how firmly entrenched we are in a system that doesn't work. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses, first published by The Feminist Press in 1973, is an essential book about the corruption of the medical establishment and its historic roots in witch hunters. In this new edition, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English have written an entirely new chapter that delves into the current fascination with and controversies about witches, exposing our fears and fantasies. They build on their classic exposé on the demonization of women healers and the political and economic monopolization of medicine. This quick history brings us up-to-date, exploring today's changing attitudes toward childbirth, alternative medicine, and modern-day witches. Barbara Ehrenreich is author of the New York Times bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, and, most recently, This Land is Their Land. Deirdre English, the former editor of Mother Jones, is a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558616616/?tag=2022091-20
(The author coins the term "collective joy" to describe gr...)
The author coins the term "collective joy" to describe group events which involve music, synchronized movement, costumes, and a feeling of loss of self. There is no precise word in English to describe the phenomenon. The book describes cycles of creation and suppression of collective joy events. The events generally arise spontaneously and are regarded as dangerous (see Collective hysteria, Riot). The powerful elements of society gradually convert the participants into spectators. This conversion drains the events of their power, and the cycle begins anew. The author describes Western Society as particularly lacking in such events and describes current and recent examples of Collective Joy events.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739485717/?tag=2022091-20
(What lies behind the human attraction to violence? Why do...)
What lies behind the human attraction to violence? Why do we glorify war, seeing it as an almost sacred undertaking? Barbara Ehrenreich is known for the originality and clarity of her thinking, and in Blood Rites she proposes a radical new theory about our attitudes to bloodshed. From the trenches of Verdun to today's front lines, Ehrenreich traces the history of warfare back to our prehistoric ancestors' terrifying experiences of being hunted by other carnivores. Written with wit, tenacity and intellectual flair, this is vintage Ehrenreich, and an account that will transform our understanding of human conflict.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847083536/?tag=2022091-20
(A brilliant and insightful work that examines the insecur...)
A brilliant and insightful work that examines the insecurities of the middle class in an attempt to explain its turn to the right during the past two decades, Fear of Falling traces the myths about the middle class to their roots in the ambitions and anxieties that torment the group and that have led to its retreat from a responsible leadership role.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060973331/?tag=2022091-20
(What draws our species to war and makes us see it as a ki...)
What draws our species to war and makes us see it as a kind of sacred undertaking? Social critic Ehrenreich plumbs the mystery of the human attraction to violence, taking the reader on a journey from the grasslands of prehistoric Africa to the trenches of Verdun, from the spectacular human sacrifices of precolonial Central America to the carnage and holocaust of 20th century "total war". She traces the evolution of war from prehistoric forms of socially-sanctioned violence to the mass "religion" which nationalism has become and shows the persistence of ancient fears in the most modern rituals and passions of war.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1853818062/?tag=2022091-20
( "Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed his...)
"Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed history of outbreaks of joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead."--Terry Eagleton, The Nation Widely praised as "impressive" (The Washington Post Book World), "ambitious" (The Wall Street Journal), and "alluring" (The Los Angeles Times), Dancing in the Streets explores a human impulse that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Drawing on a wealth of history and anthropology, Barbara Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. From the earliest orgiastic Mesopotamian rites to the medieval practice of Christianity as a "danced religion" and the transgressive freedoms of carnival, she demonstrates that mass festivities have long been central to the Western tradition. In recent centuries, this festive tradition has been repressed, cruelly and often bloodily. But as Ehrenreich argues in this original, exhilarating, and ultimately optimistic book, the celebratory impulse is too deeply ingrained in human nature ever to be completely extinguished.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805057242/?tag=2022091-20
Ehrenreich, Barbara was born on August 26, 1941 in Butte, Montana, United States. Daughter of Ben Howes and Isabelle (Oxley) Alexander.
Bachelor in Chemical Physics, Reed College, 1963. Doctor of Philosophy in Biology, Rockefeller University, 1968. Doctor (honorary), Reed College.
Doctor (honorary), State University of New York, Old Westbury. Doctor (honorary), College of Wooster, Ohio. Doctor (honorary), John Jay College.
Doctor (honorary), UMass-Lowell. Doctor (honorary), La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
Editor, Health Policy Advisory Center, New York City, 1969-1970; assistant professor, State University of New York-Old Westbury, 1971-1974; free-lance writer, lecturer fellow, New York Institute Humanities, New York City, since 1980; fellow, Institute Policy Studios, Washington, since 1982; editor, Seven Days magazine, since 1974; columnist, Mother Jones magazine, 1986-1989; essayist, Time magazine, since 1990; columnist, The Guardian, United Kingdom, since 1992.
(What draws our species to war and makes us see it as a ki...)
(A brilliant and insightful work that examines the insecur...)
( America in the 'aughts--hilariously skewered, brilliant...)
(What lies behind the human attraction to violence? Why do...)
( A sharp-witted knockdown of America's love affair with ...)
( As we watch another agonizing attempt to shift the futu...)
(What draws our species to war and makes us see it as a ki...)
(This provocative book reveals how the real sexual revolu...)
(The author coins the term "collective joy" to describe gr...)
(From the bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed, an expla...)
( Women have always been healers, and medicine has alw...)
( From prescribing the "rest cure" to diagnosing hysteria...)
(Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed ...)
(A book on positive thinking)
( "Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed his...)
(First Edition)
(New Edition)
(Reissue)
(1st)
Married John H. Ehrenreich, August 6, 1966. Children: Rosa, Benjamin. Married Gary Stevenson, December 10, 1983.