Summer Reading Recommendations

Looking for Labor Fiction

I thought I would take a break from writing about reasons to fire people to spend a few minutes writing about something more pleasant. Namely, our summer reading lists!

My reading for pleasure is typically literary fiction and popular non-fiction and the topics can vary widely. I don’t have a particular interest in labor history or employment books, but I do have a couple of books about labor that I like to recommend. Since it’s summer, and because I am writing a mystery involving a union representative as the detective, I thought I would ask folks to recommend a few books that reference labor that aren’t too heavy a lift.

My most recent favorite is The Great Escape by Saket Soni. Although this is a non-fiction story about forced labor, it reads like a thriller, as the heroes work to escape from their terrible employers. It’s one of those books I walked around the house reading.

There’s a lot of other classics about labor, like Grapes of Wrath and The Jungle. There are also a lot of well-written labor non-fiction books, like Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, and Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas.

I recently found a list of crime novels that have a labor angle and a general list that includes fiction and non-fiction. I also just discovered that there is a writer named S.L. Stoner who has written several historical crime novels that have a labor angle.

Recommendations from online sources are one thing; personal recommendations are another. Have you read any good books, particularly fiction, that have a labor angle? Please let me know!