I made the mistake of looking over some of the reviews when I was adding it here to my list. The opinions are pretty divided: the conservatives pretty much attack her credentials (or attack her ad hominem; point is sympathy is usually lacking in these folks), and those who agree seem to do uncritically (i.e. they don't question the author as much). I will try to put those opinions aside as I read it myself. I have been meaning to read it because some of the freshman composition classes where I used to work as a librarian read it for their classes. I finished the introduction, so I am already clear on the conditions of her experiment. We'll see how the rest of the book goes.

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See my blog post on it:

http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/12/booknote-nickel-and-dimed.html

In the GoodReads scheme, I gave it 3 stars for a book I liked. It is not a book I really like since I wish things were better, thus not needing to write books like these. That is the idealist part of me. She does get a bit preachy at time,s which I think can detract, so that also made me not give it a higher rating. However, I do highly recommend it to others out there.