Nonfiction Books for and about the American Working Class
1. 
A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community
by:
Natalia Molina
4.15 avg rating — 422 ratings 
3. 
A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present
by:
Howard Zinn
4.08 avg rating — 259,689 ratings 
4. 
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
by:
J.D. Vance
3.85 avg rating — 488,806 ratings 
7. 
Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town
by:
Brian Alexander
3.91 avg rating — 1,852 ratings 
8. 
Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States 4.50 avg rating — 6 ratings
10. 
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class 4.19 avg rating — 1,313 ratings
10. 
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right 4.12 avg rating — 17,562 ratings
12. 
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
by:
Naomi Klein
4.29 avg rating — 51,931 ratings 
13. 
Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory 3.96 avg rating — 24 ratings
15. 
Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative
by:
David Brock
3.83 avg rating — 1,772 ratings 15. 
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
by:
Nancy Isenberg
3.76 avg rating — 24,555 ratings 15. 
The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street
by:
Robert Scheer
4.10 avg rating — 278 ratings 15. 
Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk
by:
John Lingan
3.60 avg rating — 144 ratings 15. 
15. 
Cracker Ingenuity: Tips from the Trailer Park for the Chronically Broke
by:
P.T. Elliott
3.08 avg rating — 13 ratings 15. 
Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters
by:
Gleb Tsipursky
4.14 avg rating — 252 ratings 
15. 
Working-Class Heroes: A History of Struggle in Song: A Songbook
by:
Mat Callahan
3.75 avg rating — 4 ratings 
25. 
Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America
by:
Eyal Press
4.16 avg rating — 1,718 ratings 27. 
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness 4.52 avg rating — 115,044 ratings
27. 
Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People
by:
Thomas Frank
4.18 avg rating — 5,231 ratings 27. 
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century 3.69 avg rating — 102,339 ratings
27. 
American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears
by:
Farah Stockman
4.31 avg rating — 1,425 ratings 31. 
31. 
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
by:
Ta-Nehisi Coates
4.38 avg rating — 30,602 ratings 31. 
On the Job: The Untold Story of America's Work Centers and the New Fight for Wages, Dignity, and Health 4.08 avg rating — 25 ratings
34. 
Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy 4.26 avg rating — 1,500 ratings
34. 
In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers
by:
Bernice Yeung
4.06 avg rating — 300 ratings 
41. 
Lab Rats: Tech Gurus, Junk Science, and Management Fads―My Quest to Make Work Less Miserable
by:
Dan Lyons
3.90 avg rating — 2,132 ratings 41. 
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
by:
Hanif Abdurraqib
4.29 avg rating — 11,387 ratings 43. 
Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California 4.40 avg rating — 1,188 ratings
43. 
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
by:
Robin DiAngelo
4.16 avg rating — 170,211 ratings 43. 
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
by:
Sarah Smarsh
3.76 avg rating — 16,288 ratings 46. 
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
by:
Naomi Wolf
3.96 avg rating — 3,099 ratings 
46. 
On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane 4.27 avg rating — 2,569 ratings
49. 
How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
by:
Steven Levitsky
4.16 avg rating — 30,319 ratings 49. 
Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor 4.18 avg rating — 786 ratings
51. 
Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers
by:
Michael K. Honey
4.08 avg rating — 38 ratings 51. 
Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America
by:
Karen Petrou
3.53 avg rating — 85 ratings 
54. 
Work, Family, and Faith: Rural Southern Women in the Twentieth Century
by:
Melissa Walker
4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings 55. 
¡Sí, Ella Puede!: The Rhetorical Legacy of Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers 4.23 avg rating — 26 ratings
56. 
Ravenswood: The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor
by:
Tom Juravich
4.16 avg rating — 100 ratings 57. 
Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working-Class Struggle
by:
Paul M. Buhle
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 40 ratings 58. 
By The Ore Docks: A Working People’s History Of Duluth
by:
Richard Hudelson
3.91 avg rating — 34 ratings 59. 
I.W.W. Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent: A Facsimile Reprint of the Popular Nineteenth Edition 1923 4.49 avg rating — 47 ratings
60. 
The Age of Inequality: Corporate America's War on Working People
by:
Jeremy Gantz
3.84 avg rating — 57 ratings 61. 
"We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now": The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages
by:
Annelise Orleck
3.69 avg rating — 108 ratings 62. 
AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-1945 3.53 avg rating — 15 ratings
63. 
The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South
by:
William P. Jones
3.68 avg rating — 25 ratings 64. 
65. 
66. 
Working Women's Music: The Songs and Struggles of Women in the Cotton Mills, Textile Plants, and Needle Trades
by:
Evelyn Alloy
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating 
68. 
History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 4: The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1917
by:
Philip S. Foner
4.22 avg rating — 50 ratings 69. 
Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960 really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 97 ratings
70. 
The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement
by:
Miriam Pawel
4.07 avg rating — 151 ratings 71. 
Soapbox Rebellion: The Hobo Orator Union and the Free Speech Fights of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1909-1916
by:
Matthew S. May
4.50 avg rating — 4 ratings 72. 
Work and Sing: A History of Occupational and Labor Union Songs in the United States
by:
Ronald D. Cohen
liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating 73. 
Songs of Work and Protest: 100 Favorite Songs of American Workers Complete with Music and Historical Notes 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings
75. 
A Short History of the U.S. Working Class: From Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century
by:
Paul Le Blanc
3.86 avg rating — 91 ratings 76. 
Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (Haymarket Series) 3.85 avg rating — 33 ratings
77. 
The Fight for Fifteen: The Right Wage for a Working America
by:
David Rolf
3.70 avg rating — 73 ratings 78. 
The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-first Century
by:
Ryan Avent
3.79 avg rating — 587 ratings 79. 
Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
by:
Eric Lott
4.14 avg rating — 340 ratings 80. 
The Golden Apple: Redefining Work-Life Balance for a Diverse Workforce
by:
Mason Donovan
3.86 avg rating — 7 ratings 81. 
Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women
by:
Richard O. Boyer
3.83 avg rating — 266 ratings 82. 
Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement 3.32 avg rating — 40 ratings
83. 
I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks
by:
Gina Sheridan
3.73 avg rating — 9,429 ratings 84. 
Striking Beauties: Women Apparel Workers in the U.S. South, 1930-2000 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings
86. 
Carry it On!: A History in Song and Picture of the Working Men and Women of America
by:
Pete Seeger
4.69 avg rating — 16 ratings 87. 
Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World
by:
Paul M. Buhle
4.06 avg rating — 456 ratings 
89. 
Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work 3.83 avg rating — 1,454 ratings
92. 
I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society
by:
Robert B. Reich
3.63 avg rating — 108 ratings 93. 
Songs About Work: Essays in Occupational Culture for Richard A. Reuss
by:
Archie Green
1.67 avg rating — 3 ratings 94. 
Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture
by:
Aaron A. Fox
3.68 avg rating — 98 ratings 95. 
Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City
by:
Robin Nagle
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 704 ratings 96. 
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present 4.18 avg rating — 281 ratings
97. 
98. 
We Are All Leaders: The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930s
by:
Staughton Lynd
4.48 avg rating — 21 ratings 99. 
The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement
by:
Susan Ferriss
3.97 avg rating — 95 ratings 100. 