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Studs Terkel
Born
In Working, the Chicago broadcaster asks people to describe what they do and how they feel about it. A copy boy, a steelworker, or a person working behind a counter gets room to set out the job in their own words. Terkel’s radio archive lets you hear him discuss how he gathered those accounts.
More about Studs Terkel2
Joseph Mitchell (writer)
Born
Start with “The Cave,” Mitchell’s profile of Louis Morino, the proprietor of Sloppy Louie’s at New York’s Fulton Fish Market. Mitchell goes to the restaurant early and listens as Morino recounts his years in the seafood trade. The past and present sit side by side in a place where there’s always work going on outside the door.
More about Joseph Mitchell (writer)3
John McPhee
Born
Uncommon Carriers follows people who move freight, from a truck driver to the crew of a towboat pushing barges on the Illinois River. McPhee spends time beside them so you can see what they have to judge in the course of a trip. Start here if you want to understand the job from the seat where it happens.
More about John McPhee4
Leslie T. Chang
Factory Girls follows young women who leave home to work in China’s manufacturing towns. Chang’s reporting follows what happens around the factory too, including attempts to learn English and find a better job. It gives the workers room to have plans of their own while showing the conditions in which they make them.
More about Leslie T. Chang5
Katherine Boo
Born
In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Boo follows Abdul as he sorts and sells recyclable waste near Mumbai’s airport. The work requires speed and a practiced eye, and the income matters to his family. Start there to see how the book lets a person’s daily work explain part of the neighborhood’s economy.
More about Katherine Boo6
Sarah Jaffe
Work Won’t Love You Back follows people in occupations that are often described as callings, including teachers and people working in the arts. Jaffe asks what happens to pay and working conditions when employers expect devotion. Read her when you want reporting that connects the way people talk about a job to what the job demands of them.
More about Sarah Jaffe7
Nell Dunn
Dunn worked for a time in a sweet factory after moving to Battersea. Up the Junction is fiction set in South London, and its short scenes use conversations and pieces of daily routine to show how work fits into the characters’ lives. That makes it a useful companion to interview-based accounts of similar places.
More about Nell Dunn8
John Steinbeck
Born
The seven newspaper pieces collected in The Harvest Gypsies preceded The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck reported on migrant farm workers in California in 1936. Read the articles first if you want to see which living and working conditions he described as a reporter before he gave the subject a fictional family.
More about John Steinbeck9
Gabriel Thompson
For Working in the Shadows, Thompson took jobs alongside immigrant workers and wrote about the physical demands of shifts in fields and factories. The book’s limits are part of what makes it worth reading: a reporter can describe what a shift asks of the body while knowing he can leave the job.
More about Gabriel Thompson10
Florence Aubenas
Born
For The Night Cleaner, Aubenas took a series of short cleaning jobs in France, including shifts on a Channel ferry. The account shows what has to happen before a shift begins when people piece together hours across jobs. It also gives readers an example of what an undercover reporter can see through temporary participation.
More about Florence Aubenas11
Robin Wall Kimmerer
In the black ash basket chapter of Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer learns from Potawatomi basket maker John Pigeon. She follows what happens to the wood between the tree and the woven basket. The work matters in her account both as a practical skill and as knowledge about the living material.
More about Robin Wall Kimmerer12
Anna Badkhen
Fisherman’s Blues follows people who go to sea in pirogues from the Senegalese port of Joal. Badkhen spends time aboard and ashore, where the day’s work has consequences for people beyond the crew. Read it for what the boat and its return tell you about a way of making a living.
More about Anna Badkhen13
Peter Hessler
Born
The last part of Country Driving turns toward factory life in a growing Chinese industrial town. Hessler follows the people who start and run businesses as well as the workers who arrive looking for jobs. Read that section after Factory Girls for a different reporting vantage on manufacturing and migration.
More about Peter Hessler14
Tillie Olsen
Yonnondio follows a fictional family from the coal mines of Wyoming to tenant farming and then the slaughterhouses. Moving from job to job changes the places in which the family can live and what its members can do for each other. Start here for a novelist who keeps the household in view alongside the workplace.
More about Tillie Olsen
