Fans pick 100 books like Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow

By Jacqueline Jones,

Here are 100 books that Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow fans have personally recommended if you like Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Making of the English Working Class

Cecilia Morgan Author Of Sweet Canadian Girls Abroad: A Transnational History of Stage and Screen Actresses

From my list on social and women’s history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in family stories, the history of women’s lives, and history in general. Discovering new (at least it was at the time!) work in social and women’s history at university in the 1980s opened up new vistas for me and showed me it was possible to do academic work in the discipline in creative and challenging ways. These books were crucial to my development as a historian, both because of their subject matter and because they are so beautifully written. They brought the past “to life” for me and showed that historians could care about their subjects without sacrificing academic rigor.

Cecilia's book list on social and women’s history

Cecilia Morgan Why did Cecilia love this book?

I read this book the summer before I returned to university to complete my B.A. Thompson’s book convinced me that one of my first loves, the study of history, was where I wanted to be.

It is a ground-breaking study of people overlooked, ignored, and condescended to by historians, whose lives were changed by early forms of industrialization in late 18th and early 19th-century England. Thompson treats these people as active agents in shaping their worlds socially, economically, and politically, and he takes their role in “making class” and political activism seriously.

It is also beautifully written, and the depth of his research sets a high standard for subsequent generations of historians.

By E.P. Thompson,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Making of the English Working Class as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fifty years since first publication, E. P. Thompson's revolutionary account of working-class culture and ideals is published in Penguin Modern Classics, with a new introduction by historian Michael Kenny

This classic and imaginative account of working-class society in its formative years, 1780 to 1832, revolutionized our understanding of English social history. E. P. Thompson shows how the working class took part in its own making and re-creates the whole-life experience of people who suffered loss of status and freedom, who underwent degradation, and who yet created a cultured and political consciousness of great vitality.

Reviews:

'A dazzling vindication of the…


Book cover of City of Women

Cecilia Morgan Author Of Sweet Canadian Girls Abroad: A Transnational History of Stage and Screen Actresses

From my list on social and women’s history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in family stories, the history of women’s lives, and history in general. Discovering new (at least it was at the time!) work in social and women’s history at university in the 1980s opened up new vistas for me and showed me it was possible to do academic work in the discipline in creative and challenging ways. These books were crucial to my development as a historian, both because of their subject matter and because they are so beautifully written. They brought the past “to life” for me and showed that historians could care about their subjects without sacrificing academic rigor.

Cecilia's book list on social and women’s history

Cecilia Morgan Why did Cecilia love this book?

Stansell’s book brings to life the lives and experiences of working-class women in New York City, a group often ignored by historians. She creates a vivid portrait of the hardships that these women endured as they struggled to survive and often had to make their living in occupations such as domestic service or sex work.

Stansell doesn’t paint them as victims, though, as Stansell points to their agency and strength. Her research is remarkable for its rigor and depth. After reading this book, I had a very different understanding of New York City in this period.

By Christine Stansell,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked City of Women as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Before the Civil War, a new idea of womanhood took shape in America in general and in the Northeast in particular. Women of the propertied classes assumed the mantle of moral guardians of their families and the nation. Laboring women, by contrast, continued to suffer from the oppressions of sex and class. In fact, their very existence troubled their more prosperous sisters, for the impoverished female worker violated dearly held genteel precepts of 'woman's nature' and 'woman's place.'

City of Women delves into the misfortunes that New York City's laboring women suffered and the problems that resulted. Looking at how…


Book cover of Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century

Cecilia Morgan Author Of Sweet Canadian Girls Abroad: A Transnational History of Stage and Screen Actresses

From my list on social and women’s history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in family stories, the history of women’s lives, and history in general. Discovering new (at least it was at the time!) work in social and women’s history at university in the 1980s opened up new vistas for me and showed me it was possible to do academic work in the discipline in creative and challenging ways. These books were crucial to my development as a historian, both because of their subject matter and because they are so beautifully written. They brought the past “to life” for me and showed that historians could care about their subjects without sacrificing academic rigor.

Cecilia's book list on social and women’s history

Cecilia Morgan Why did Cecilia love this book?

This book is very dear to me because of the author’s breadth of vision, the creativity with which she approached it, and the radical possibilities for women’s lives and gender relations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that she uncovered.

Taylor demonstrates the importance of radical utopianism in challenging traditional notions of gender relations and marriage and introduces us to fascinating women who were part of that process. Her book shows us how new possibilities were considered for society and makes us realize that women’s marginalization in more mainstream socialist parties was not inevitable. Taylor’s writing is elegant and moving.

By Barbara Taylor,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Eve and the New Jerusalem as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A new edition of Barbara Taylor's classic book, with a new introduction.

In the early nineteenth century, radicals all over Europe and America began to conceive of a 'New Moral World', and struggled to create their own utopias, with collective family life, communal property, free love and birth control. In Britain, the visionary ideals of the Utopian Socialist, Robert Owen, attracted thousands of followers, who for more than a quarter of a century attempted to put theory into practice in their own local societies, at rousing public meetings, in trade unions and in their new Communities of Mutual Association.

Barbara…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870

Cecilia Morgan Author Of Sweet Canadian Girls Abroad: A Transnational History of Stage and Screen Actresses

From my list on social and women’s history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been interested in family stories, the history of women’s lives, and history in general. Discovering new (at least it was at the time!) work in social and women’s history at university in the 1980s opened up new vistas for me and showed me it was possible to do academic work in the discipline in creative and challenging ways. These books were crucial to my development as a historian, both because of their subject matter and because they are so beautifully written. They brought the past “to life” for me and showed that historians could care about their subjects without sacrificing academic rigor.

Cecilia's book list on social and women’s history

Cecilia Morgan Why did Cecilia love this book?

This book places First Nations and Métis women at the heart of fur trade society and shows that they played crucial roles as workers and wives, mothers, and daughters. Van Kirk creates striking portraits of women whose relationships with fur traders made them important linchpins between their Indigenous and Métis communities and white fur trade society.

The book takes an innovative approach to studying the fur trade in early Canada. Van Kirk also shows how these women’s lives were deeply affected by changes in the fur trade and the coming of settler society to Western Canada.

By Sylvia Van Kirk,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Many Tender Ties as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Sexual encounters between Indian women and the fur traders of the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies are generally thought to have been casual and illicit in nature. This illuminating book reveals instead that Indian–white marriages, sanctioned "after the custom of the country," resulted in many warm and enduring family unions. These were profoundly altered by the coming of the white women in the 1820s and 1830s.


Book cover of Suck on the Marrow

DeMisty D. Bellinger Author Of Peculiar Heritage

From my list on poetry inspired by history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I care about social justice, equality, and history, as well as beauty and art. As an African-American woman who was raised working class and who understands how history informs the present, I have fallen in love with the depiction of history in poetry and prose. Not all of my writing has something to do with race or gender or class, but all of my writing is about justice in some way. I want to get to the good of people.

DeMisty's book list on poetry inspired by history

DeMisty D. Bellinger Why did DeMisty love this book?

It’s a beautiful book, from the cover to the notes. It’s a neo-slave narrative that follows various enslaved, then freed people. Through this book, I learned how poetry collections can be explorations of history based on fact.

Like any good collection, reading one poem compels you forward, but each poem can stand on its own. She is a master of form. For instance, her persona poetry is powerful. The first poem in the book, “The Trapper’s Boast,” devoid of empathy, shows the business of slavery from an undesirable point of view. 

But what is moving is the ability to fall in love and to care even in the worst conditions, as well as the will to live and strive towards freedom in spite of any threats.

I started writing neo-slave narrative poems about a woman escaping slavery. I imagined that the poems I was writing, like Suck on the Marrow…

By Camille T. Dungy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Suck on the Marrow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**Winner of the American Book Award

**Silver Medalist for the California Book Award

Suck on the Marrow is a historical narrative, revolving around six main characters and set in mid-19th century Virginia and Philadelphia. The book traces the experiences of fugitive slaves, kidnapped Northern-born blacks, and free people of color, exploring the interdependence between plantation life and life in Northern and Southern American towns and illuminating the connections between the successes and difficulties of a wide range of Americans, free and slave, black and white, Northern and Southern. This neo-slave narrative treats the truths of lives touched by slavery with…


Book cover of Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America

Sam Mitrani Author Of The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894

From my list on why takes on the police miss the real problem.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of history at College of DuPage, a community college outside of Chicago. Growing up in New York City and rural Vermont in the 1980s and 1990s around people who questioned everything made me think a lot about how and why the social world is organized in such an obviously unjust and irrational way. I have tried to understand the development of this organization ever since.

Sam's book list on why takes on the police miss the real problem

Sam Mitrani Why did Sam love this book?

While the origins of northern police in this country were rooted in the development of a new set of class relations among white people, discussions of policing today cannot be untangled from the history of African Americans.

Trotter shows that Black people have always been a crucial part of this country’s workforce. Racism itself is rooted in the ways that Black workers’ position has been shaped by capitalists, non-black workers, and Black workers themselves, and this has been true since the dawn of slavery.

In his last chapters, Trotter brilliantly illustrates how the problems created for the entire working class by the end of the post-World War II economic boom were inflicted out of all proportion on the Black population. In other words, the relatively well-paying jobs were destroyed, and it was Black workers in particular who lost them.

The rise of mass incarceration since the 1970s and the violent…

By Joe William Trotter, Jr.,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Workers on Arrival as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"An eloquent and essential correction to contemporary discussions of the American working class."-The Nation

From the ongoing issues of poverty, health, housing and employment to the recent upsurge of lethal police-community relations, the black working class stands at the center of perceptions of social and racial conflict today. Journalists and public policy analysts often discuss the black poor as "consumers" rather than "producers," as "takers" rather than "givers," and as "liabilities" instead of "assets."

In his engrossing new history, Workers on Arrival, Joe William Trotter, Jr. refutes these perceptions by charting the black working class's vast contributions to the making…


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Book cover of Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption

Who Is a Worthy Mother? By Rebecca Wellington,

I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…

Book cover of Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson Author Of The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem's Greatest Bookstore

From my list on children’s books about freedom.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a former children’s librarian who writes books for children and young adults. I love history, especially black history. We didn’t get much in school when I was a child, so I’ve been catching up on some of what I missed. I am particularly drawn to under-told stories about people who deserve more recognition for their contributions. I’m proud that some of those people are members of my own family.

Vaunda's book list on children’s books about freedom

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson Why did Vaunda love this book?

Based on actual slave documents, Ashley Bryan, through his accomplished paintings and poetry, imagines the lives of eleven men and women sold at auction in 1828. We learn the market prices of the eleven, but Bryan goes deep, showing us the true value of each unique individual. The soul and spirit of this lovely book lay in the astounding resilience, the survival of hope and dreams in the hearts and minds of these enslaved people. Amidst the ugliness of slavery, Bryan manages to leave me uplifted, even joyful — joyful about the unwavering human belief in and desire for freedom.  

By Ashley Bryan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Freedom Over Me as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 6, 7, 8, and 9.

What is this book about?

Imagine being looked up and down and being valued as less than chair. Less than an ox. Less than a dress. Maybe about the same as...a lantern.

You, an object. An object to sell.

In his gentle yet deeply powerful way, Ashley Bryan goes to the heart of how a slave is given a monetary value by the slave owner, tempering this with the one thing that CAN'T be bought or sold-dreams. Inspired by the actual will of a plantation owner that lists the worth of each and every one of his "workers", Bryan has created collages around that document,…


Book cover of Twice Condemned: Slaves and the Criminal Laws of Virginia, 1705-1865

James M. Denham Author Of A Rogue's Paradise: Crime and Punishment in Antebellum Florida, 1821-1861

From my list on crime and punishment in the Antebellum South.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of history and Director of the Lawton M. Chiles Jr. Center for Florida History at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. I am a specialist in Southern, social, criminal justice, and legal history. I am the author or co-author of seven books, including three that address criminal justice at the state and federal level. My articles and reviews on criminal justice history have appeared in the America Historical Review, American Journal of Legal History, Journal of Southern History, Florida Historical Quarterly, Florida Bar Journal, and Georgia Historical Quarterly.

James' book list on crime and punishment in the Antebellum South

James M. Denham Why did James love this book?

Philip J. Schwarz’s Twice Condemned adeptly analyzes the history of enslaved African Americans' relationship with the criminal courts of the Old Dominion from roughly 1700 to the end of the Civil War.  Based on over four thousand trials from the colonial, early national, and antebellum periods, no other book does such a comprehensive job of analyzing the prevalence, longevity, and variety of behavior attributed to slave convicts. This book also provides a detailed picture of how one slave society evolved, and along the way, it uncovers previously unexamined aspects of slave culture, and of slave owners' attitudes toward the "domestic enemy" in their midst.  Schwarz argues that the judicial system for slaves served two purposes: it helped slave owners control slaves and enabled authorities to sanction criminal behavior. This dual function of slave trials mirrored the two kinds of slaves' behavior judges tried to suppress.

When focused on slave…

By Philip J. Schwarz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Twice Condemned as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Schwarz, Philip J. Twice Condemned: Slaves and the Criminal Laws of Virginia, 1705-1865. [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press]. [1988]. xvi, 354pp. Reprinted 1998 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 98-4424 Hardcover. New. Analyzes the history of enslaved African Americans' relationship with the criminal courts of the Old Dominion during a 160 year period. Before Twice Condemned was first published in 1988, historians often focused primarily on isolated or dramatic examples of the sometimes deadly conflict present in societies based on slave labor. But Twice Condemned analyzes the prevalence, longevity, and variety of behavior attributed to slave convicts. In doing…


Book cover of Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880

Kellie Carter Jackson Author Of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance

From my list on black resistance to white supremacy with a path toward liberation.

Why am I passionate about this?

For most of my life, I have dedicated myself to confronting, combatting, or deconstructing white supremacy. It impacts everyone. Much of my work is about highlighting the ways Black people have refused and resisted racial discrimination, violence, and harm. We can never have too many tools, and equally important for me was being able to have tools that achieved their purpose. I wrote We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance to remind readers that there has never been a time in the history of this country when Black people have not fought back against their oppression.

Kellie's book list on black resistance to white supremacy with a path toward liberation

Kellie Carter Jackson Why did Kellie love this book?

Anytime I am ever asked about a book on my top list, Du Bois’s book is a staple. Is it over 700 pages? Yes. Was it written over 100 years ago? Almost! Still, Du Bois’ arguments are evergreen.

Written with accessible and some might argue biting language, Du Bois gets to the heart of what the Civil War was really fought over, not slavery, but labor. Before one can get free, you have to know why you were enslaved.

By W.E.B. Du Bois,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du
Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history.

Black Reconstruction in America tells and interprets the story of…


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Book cover of The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America's Modern Penal System, 1829-1913

The Deviant Prison By Ashley Rubin,

What were America's first prisons like? How did penal reformers, prison administrators, and politicians deal with the challenges of confining human beings in long-term captivity as punishment--what they saw as a humane intervention?

The Deviant Prison centers on one early prison: Eastern State Penitentiary. Built in Philadelphia, one of the…

Book cover of Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class

Gregg Hecimovich Author Of The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman's Narrative

From my list on recovering lost histories.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a biographer and literary scholar who loves to resurrect stories otherwise lost to history. I first felt this calling on football Saturdays at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, when I would sneak into the Rare Book Room to pore over old records, while my friends all went to the game. There I checked out manuscript boxes that told stories of the communities I inhabited. On these Saturdays, I started to see the invisible forces that created my physical world and marked my presence. Every book I picked below does the same precise work—they make visible a past that shapes our present.

Gregg's book list on recovering lost histories

Gregg Hecimovich Why did Gregg love this book?

Weaving in her own ancestral history, Kelley knits an extraordinary journey of the Black working class from slavery to our contemporary world—from Georgia to Philadelphia, Florida to Chicago, Texas to Oakland, we engage generations of mostly unheralded workers whose radical genius shaped our labor history and forged nourishing and joyful lives out-of-view of most white accounts of the working class.

Kelley’s prose celebrates and brings to the surface the hidden lives that improved our contemporary world. 

By Blair LM Kelley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Black Folk as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

There have been countless books, articles, and televised reports in recent years about the almost mythic "white working class," a tide of commentary that has obscured the labor, and even the very existence, of entire groups of working people, including everyday Black workers. In this brilliant corrective, Black Folk, acclaimed historian Blair LM Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story.

Spanning two hundred years-from one of Kelley's earliest known ancestors, an enslaved blacksmith, to the essential workers of the Covid-19 pandemic-Black Folk highlights the lives of the laundresses, Pullman porters, domestic maids, and postal…


Book cover of The Making of the English Working Class
Book cover of City of Women
Book cover of Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century

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Interested in African Americans, Slavery, and Women's history?

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