In Had I Known, Barbara Ehrenreich (Living with a Wild God; Natural Causes) explores social issues in 40 essays published from 1999 through 2019. Even her sharp, dry wit can't soften these timely and hair-raising topics, and the collection is a reminder of what hasn't been addressed in the United States.
Ehrenreich, whose many books focus on undervalued citizens and underexposed social truths, opens Had I Known with sobering news: fewer investigative journalists like her are working today. "Squeezed to generate more profit for billionaire newspaper owners," reporters have been laid off, replaced by freelancers. (She has helped fund the Economic Hardship Reporting Project to assist underrepresented struggling journalists.)
Arguably the best known of Ehrenreich's books is Nickel and Dimed, reported when, in 1998, she went "undercover" in the low-wage workforce, concluding that as bad as those poverty-level jobs were, conditions were bound to worsen (with the 1999 economic forecast). By 2007 things were no better, and "Going to Extremes: CEOs vs. Slaves" cites increasing polarization, not only in bottom-tier jobs but among professions, such as professors' incomes compared to those of adjuncts.
In her prescient 2006 piece "Are Illegal Immigrants the Problem?" she advocated that all low-wage workers join immigrants in banding together for better wages and conditions. Multiple essays note the criminalization of poverty and homelessness, including cities' cracking down on distributing food to the poor.
Ehrenreich takes on health (like Nickel and Dimed, she wrote 2001's "Welcome to Cancerland" from "inside" as a breast cancer patient, decrying the emphasis on "pink ribbons" over environmental carcinogens and patriarchal medicine), sexual harassment, "mass market mindfulness" and more, in essays as provocative now as when they were first written. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, freelance reviewer