but let me tell you what I got out of Nickeled and Dimed: Don't hire a cleaning company to clean your house.

The rest of the book had been summed up well in the essay from which it was expanded.

I thought David Shipler's The Working Poor was way WAY better, because it's about people who REALLY live on minimum wage and close to the edge with no net, not a journalist who tries it out for a short period of time with a family and a savings account and a car and a house that she can always return to. I'm not saying her book is bad, I just think his is much more compelling.