Author and activist Barbara Ehrenreich dead at 81

Barbara Ehrenreich
(Image credit: Josh Lawton/Digital First Media/Boulder Daily Camera via Getty Images)

Best-selling author, activist, and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, whose book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America has become hallowed text in the realm of social justice literature, died Thursday at the age of 81. The cause was a stroke, per her daughter, Rosa Brooks.

"She was, she made clear, ready to go," son Ben Ehrenreich tweeted Friday. "She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell."

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Brigid Kennedy

Brigid Kennedy worked at The Week from 2021 to 2023 as a staff writer, junior editor and then story editor, with an interest in U.S. politics, the economy and the music industry.