Prowling in the Land of Unequal Opportunity

In the milder last years of the Franco era in Spain, with the regime doing more appealing than dictating to the public, roadside signs went up warning of wildfires: “When the Forest Burns It Is Your Forest Burning.” Soon a derisive “Sir Count!” could be read scrawled at the end of one of them.

Similarly, the title of Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest sortie to skewer the skewed balances of power and privilege in America. Taking Woody Guthrie’s famous line “This Land Is Your Land,” she replaces “Your” with “Their.”

Ms. Ehrenreich has long been a happy warrior sallying forth against what she regards as the Big Lie about equal opportunity in our society. She unhoods the wink, you might say: she peels away the myths she sees pacifying the overwhelming (and overwhelmed) majority in the interests of a manipulative minority. Her central myth is the rising tide that lifts all boats. No, she would protest, sinks them: Can’t you see the boats are chained fast to the bottom?

To call her prolific is understating. She has 15 books listed on her credit page, 6 of them in collaboration with others: not so much a writer as a writer’s collective. They tackle matters like the struggle of service workers to make do on miserable pay, the hollow offerings of the career advice-and-placement industry, the middle class’s fear of falling, men’s inability to commit, the historical flimflamming of women and much more.

This new book runs through the same topics — runs through, as in a dicing machine. The pieces are brief, and there are more than 60 of them. They are a collection of newspaper and magazine commentaries; many are blog postings.