I think it's tragic that we have this human capacity, which appears to be hardwired, or so the evolutionary biologists say, for collective joy. We have these techniques for generating it that go back thousands of years, and yet we tend not to use this.

Ehrenreich has two children. She divorced Stevenson in 1993. In 1983 Barbara Ehrenreich married Gary Stevenson a union organizer for the Teamsters.

She is a widely-read and award-winning columnist and essayist and author of 21 books. During the 1980s and early 1990s Barbara Ehrenreich was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. Barbara Ehrenreich (pron.