The Snarling Citizen: Essays - Softcover

Ehrenreich, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060976888 ISBN 13: 9780060976880

Publisher: Perennial, 1996

Synopsis

A satirist and social commentator looks into the soul of the 1990s in a collection of essays that takes a sharp look at both conservative and liberal viewpoints

About this title

Review:

She's got guts. Barbara Ehrenreich bravely wades into the river of pop culture, eagerly swims through it, and comes out the other side able to explain it all in clear and clever prose. With the ever-surprising gifts of a true satirist, she takes on everything from gender wars to shooting wars to the obsession with O.J. And she even explains how Beavis and Butthead have brought us "a great gift to humankind" by introducing "prewatched television." The many smiles produced by Ehrenreich's observations can only be matched by the thoughts they provoke.

From Publishers Weekly:

The only reason to collect columns and call them essays is to display the work of a superlative writer. Ehrenreich is one such. This collection contains pieces from the Nation, the Guardian, Time and other publications, each one short and slamming head on into political correctness and sloppy thinking. Organized religion? Ehrenreich explains the difference between a cult and a religion: "Forty-eight people donning plastic and shooting themselves in the head is a 'cult,' while a hundred million people bowing before a flesh-hating elderly celibate is obviously a world-class religion." Before you can draw breath, she polishes off a few more sacred cows: "[A] half dozen Trotskyists meeting over coffee is a 'sect,' while a few million gun-toting, Armageddon-ready Baptists are referred to as the Republican Party." She also turns her razor-sharp verbal arrows on health food faddists who attack everything appetizing and even on the holy of holies: "We are all, it is often said, 'in recovery.' And from what? Our families, in most cases." Ehrenreich is irresistibly quotable as she lashes out at welfare, Haiti, O.J., Bobbitry and housework. A reader who wants to be entertained or infuriated, or simply to identify will have a roller coaster ride with these bracing doses of verbal purgative.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Perennial
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0060976888
• ISBN 13: 9780060976880
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256