Steven Greenhouse’s The Big Squeeze was originally published last year, but this dire assessment of the state of the American workplace has new relevance in today’s economy—and it will be released in paperback next week. Greenhouse, a labor reporter for The New York Times, interviewed hundreds of employees around the country and documented workplace accidents, tragic layoffs, and embittered lawsuits. He followed efforts to hold onto minimum-wage jobs despite threats of termination and painted a chilling picture of the corporate climate that entrapped them. “The bad news is that in today’s hyper-competitive climate, the corporate sector is no longer able to administer the nation’s social safety net,” Robert Frank wrote in a review of the book for The New York Times. “Government is really the only alternative.”