Nomadland by Jessica Bruder is a nonfiction modern day horror novel. I liked the highly appropriate subtitle: Surviving America In The Twenty-First Century. I am an avid fan of fiction horror novels but this real horror story hits close to home. I have read and heard accounts of our aging population choosing between food and medicine, food and housing, and living below the poverty line but many of us hear these accounts only occasionally. We then move on to the next news item. Jessica Bruder puts more precise numbers to this demographic. In only a few cases are “screen” names used to protect privacy. See her “Notes” section for details. Bruder has done an exhaustive study over more than three years and has returned to several sources for follow up interviews. The startling information I read and listened to in the Kindle book and Audible recorded book kept me awake nights.
As a baby boomer myself, this is where the baby boomer hippie crowd has landed. Many of that younger 1960s crowd lived what they considered a humanist, moral existence that respected the environment. Without training as doctors, it seemed they respected the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm.” A large majority slipped into mainstream society and went for high earnings, the white picket fence surrounding a home steeply appreciating in value, a solid retirement plan, and a path that would assure their children would be even better off than they themselves were. When retirement arrived, they would not have to depend on their children for support. They would just sit back, relax, and admire the accomplishments of their children. Little did many of them realize they would be returning to an existence that closely mirrored their 1960s existence. This horror story began in 2008.
In a time when many countries face a refugee problem, one term that stands out is “economic refugees.” Countries do not want to resettle people who flee their home countries simply because they could not find a job. In this book, Bruder describes US citizen economic refugees. They are not fleeing the US. In many cases, they are moving from place to place seeking all kinds of temporary work just to make ends meet to buy necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. This last item is added to the “big three” because medicine is increasingly necessary for Bruder’s target population. These are the “old people,” the ones the kids don’t visit and don’t support, the ones for which a small social security payment cannot possibly cover the bills, and the ones that must work at ages seventy plus to survive. This book is in small part about corporate and government greed that takes advantage of a captive group. The larger part of the book is the human story.
People in this group are diverse. Some have little education, some are self-educated, some have advanced degrees. Many have experience in a variety of service jobs while others have been senior managers traveling globally. There are people with degrees that have become obsolete in a world that values fast changing technology-based occupations. Many of these people have “played the game.” They bought homes that would always increase in value except, after 2008, when they didn’t. Investors in retirement plans that further invested contributions in companies that went bankrupt. When they work, they are now temporary workers. During the 2008 crisis people in my apartment complex in Bangkok came to me with reports of declining municipal bond earnings as some municipalities went bankrupt. Those in our retirement community had decided to live our post-working career lives in a low cost of living foreign countries but the low cost of living does not mean NO cost of living. The point here is most people described in this book planned for a pleasant life in their “golden years.” For most of them, it was not happening. They had been forced into virtual slave labor with below minimum wage jobs that come with no benefits.
A solution offered in this novel is to live minimalist. Severely minimalist. Living in an RV or mobile home is almost a luxury for many of this population who opt instead for smaller vans or “normal” sized cars and even compact cars. They inhabit campgrounds set up for a traveling population when they can afford it, or they do “stealth” camping when they can’t. This may be one of the few books where people have a lot of good things to say about Walmart. This population is mobile, traveling to where the temporary work is and putting up with conditions they would never have accepted in their younger employable years. There is not much use joining in a class action suit against clearly legally indefensible employer actions. Given the speed of courts with associated appeal remedies, the class would disappear by the time final judgments are rendered.
There is another story which the author just drifts into. It is logical and Bruder doesn’t explicitly say she is planning to do this, but she decides to become one with the itinerant population. She will, for a time, pursue a minimalist lifestyle. Readers will immediately see the contrast between her and the travelers. She can “opt out” at any time and return to a more mainstream existence. When will she decide to do this? The answer will hold a reader’s attention.
There are philosophical digressions about the morality of economic decisions made and sometimes forced, decisions made by people Bruder describes and decisions made by employers who temporarily employ them. This is not a book of unsupported opinions. Bruder’s “Notes” section contains two hundred forty-eight references supporting claims made in each of her chapters.
This is a story of survivors in a world of harsh economic realities. As a member of this group, I found my solution was to live outside the US, but my decision was easy. US Army training led to an appreciation of how to survive abroad. A retirement income insufficient to support “the good life” in the US supports a comfortable life abroad. But my solution is not for everyone. US citizens who have paid their dues, many of them through high taxes, should neither be forced to leave the country (NB: I was not forced) nor should they be forced to live with conditions depicted in this novel.
I gave this a five-star Amazon rating despite the not always kind description of Amazon working conditions. I am rating the book, not Amazon. I highly recommend this book to readers planning for their own retirement. It comes down to the advice: “Don’t believe anyone. Think for yourself.” I was so impressed by this book that I bought it at the full price of USD 9.32 after hearing an Audible sample. Then I downloaded the Audible companion because I wanted to continue hearing the book at work. I am sure my employer will welcome my further retirement. For this book, there was no KU option. No reading for free. Sometimes you just spend the money.
$7.59 with 55 percent savings
Digital List Price: $16.95 
The Digital List Price is the suggested price provided by the publisher for the eBook format.
Learn more
Learn more
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Great on Kindle
Great Experience. Great Value.
Putting our best book forward
Each Great on Kindle book offers a great reading experience, at a better value than print to keep your wallet happy.
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Get the free Kindle app: 
Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
- How to Live in a Car, Van or RV--And Get Out of Debt, Travel and Find True FreedomRobert WellsKindle Edition
Popular Highlights in this book
Today the United States has the most unequal society of all developed nations. America’s level of inequality is comparable to that of Russia, China, Argentina, and the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo.Highlighted by 2,203 Kindle readers- Being human means yearning for more than subsistence. As much as food or shelter, we require hope.Highlighted by 1,749 Kindle readers
- America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves . . . Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.Highlighted by 1,431 Kindle readers
- “We’re facing the first-ever reversal in retirement security in modern U.S. history,” she explained. “Starting with the younger baby boomers, each successive generation is now doing worse than previous generations in terms of their ability to retire without seeing a drop in living standards.”Highlighted by 1,365 Kindle readers
- It’s estimated that more than forty thousand RVers dwell in the desert near Quartzsite from December through February.Highlighted by 702 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
About the author
Roadkill
The colorful and upbeat real-life characters in “Nomadland” are living their senior-citizen years in RV’s, vans and cars and working low-paying jobs due to financial trouble, addictions, mental health challenges, and family dysfunction. If there are any “vanily” who choose this itinerant and stressful lifestyle, we don’t read about them in these pages.But just because the people profiled in Jessica Bruder’s book are pitching a necessary evil as a choice may be a coping strategy for these van dwellers; for the author to adopt that point of view in a work of nonfiction isn’t professional journalism – it’s slumming (she has a home to go back to, after all). Bruder doesn’t ask the hard questions, instead she spins their heartbreaking – and backbreaking stories – into a modern-day version of the “Grapes of Wrath,” minus the family and a future.It’s watered-down storytelling on a lot of levels including fact checking. She writes that one nomad used “drilled-out pennies – they were cheaper than [flat] washers.” Flat washers can be bought for .10¢ at any hardware store. Drilling pennies is not easy and requires equipment like a drill, bits, clamps, and, of course, the pennies. The whole scene defies reality and violates the Rule of Survival Thermodynamics which is that you never put more energy into a survival activity than is taken out – a code these nomads live by.Bruder loses her objectivity, but not her sympathy The result is a mushy mix of romanticism and pity, and her subjects come across as happy failures instead of scrappy survivors.
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Top reviews from other countries
- BuffyReviewed in Canada on May 4, 2021
Just bought it, but have been reading the reviews.
-
Antonio D.Reviewed in Spain on September 30, 2023
Libro fundamental para entender Usa
-
A.B.C.Reviewed in Germany on January 13, 2022
Eindrucksvoller, authentischer, bewegender Film auf der Basis eines eindrucksvollen Buches.
-
-
Christian NugueReviewed in France on September 26, 2021
VIVRE SANS ENTRAVES EN MOBILHOME
