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1) Martin Eden
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Martin Eden (1909) is a novel by American writer Jack London. The book follows the tradition of the Künstlerroman, a narrative that traces the life and development of an artist, to tell the story of a young man not unlike London himself. Part fiction, part autobiography, Martin Eden examines the consequences of dreams and achievements, successes and failures, for a young artist struggling with fame. The novel is heavily influenced by London's socialist...
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D.H. Lawrence's third novel and one of his most beloved, Sons and Lovers is considered the author's most autobiographical book, following the life of Paul Morel. Paul is an emerging young artist born to a mother who married for passion and came to regret it. Both Paul and his brother William are in their mother's thrall to the point where they find it difficult to detach and pursue romance for themselves. The depictions of their liaisons resulted...
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Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like...
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"In the 1950s, Ellie and Brick are teenagers in love. A basketball star, Brick could escape his abusive father and be the first person in his working-class family to go to college. But when Ellie becomes pregnant, they marry, she gives up her dream of nursing school, and Brick gets a union card instead. This riveting novel tells the story of three generations in a working-class family; especially Brick and Ellie's daughter Samantha. Illuminating issues...
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"After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during...
6) Empire Falls
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Miles Roby, called back from college to the small town of Empire Falls in Dexter County, Maine to take care of his ailing mother, falls into a rut that keeps him trapped until years later when a series of revelations and tragedies jolts him back into an awareness of his life.
7) Shuggie Bain
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"Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for his artistic brother and practical sister. She dreams of...
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Before he authored the dystopian 1984 and the allegorical Animal Farm, George Orwell was a journalist, reporting on England's working class — an investigation that led him to examine democratic socialism. In the 1930s, the Left Book Club, a socialist group in England, sent George Orwell to investigate the poverty and mass unemployment in the industrial north of England. Once there, he went beyond the requests of the book club,...
11) Elegy for Eddie
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Maisie Dobbs takes on her most personal case yet, a twisting investigation into the brutal killing of a street peddler that will take her from the working-class neighborhoods of her childhood into London's highest circles of power. Set in London between the two world wars.
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"A history of the class system in America from the colonial era to the present illuminates the crucial legacy of the underprivileged white demographic, citing the pivotal contributions of lower-class white workers in wartime, social policy, and the rise of the Republican Party,"--NoveList.
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A plea -- deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans -- to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure.
Through the lives of real Americans, Kristof and WuDunn address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Rural Yamhill, Oregon, prospered for much of the twentieth century but has...
15) The jungle
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Presents Upton Sinclair's classic novel, which depicts the conditions of the Chicago stockyards through the eyes of a young Lithuanian immigrant in early-twentieth-century America, and includes an introduction and notes.
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"'Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside you: all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write 'em in your books and show everyone who we are.' So begins DéLana R.A. Dameron's stunning novel-in-stories, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Mosby spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their...
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"Mike Muñoz is a young Mexican American not too many years out of high school--and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew. Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can't seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it"--
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"Orphans Gig and Rye Dolan don't have a penny to their names. The brothers work grueling, odd jobs each day just to secure a meal, and spend nights sleeping wherever they can with other day laborers. Twenty-three-year-old Gig is a passionate union man, fighting for fair pay and calling out the corrupt employers who exploit the working class. Eager to emulate his older brother, Rye follows suit, though he can't quite muster Gig's passion for the cause....
19) Mercury
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"It's 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone's table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun. The Joseph brothers become Marley's whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and...
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"The story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. Born under different stars--Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a...
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