Fans pick 63 books like Making a Real Killing

This gripping, cinematic tale of a watershed workplace disaster immerses you in the grueling, gritty world of young immigrant – Jewish and Italian – women workers in early-20th century New York City. The horrific fire in a shirt-waist factory saw workers jumping to their deaths, revealing that “a huge and vulnerable world existed far above the street.” It created a cauldron of outrage and empathy, bare-knuckle politics, and leftist ideology leading to reform. You most remember the gumption and survival instinct of these young women, far from home without even the right to vote, coming together in the Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and making history.

In the early 1990s, Decatur, Illinois was a “time-battered” town, in the words of indefatigable labor journalist Steve Franklin, where factories hunkered amid grungy bars, a forlorn old motel, and prison. Unions had largely capitulated to global capital, as wages and jobs were slashed across the industrial heartland and families suffered in silence. In Decatur workers made a last stand at three eponymous employers – Firestone, Staley, and Caterpillar. Franklin – at the Chicago Tribune, one of the last labor journalists nationwide -- brings us evocatively to the front lines of these three strikes, weaving accessible socioeconomic analysis through the landscape of a bittersweet Bruce Springsteen song.

The name “Detroit” too often conjures images of poverty-porn: gorgeously crumbling buildings, post-apocalyptic urban decay, lost souls wandering cracked streets. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying shatters this image with unfettered energy. It chronicles the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the auto plants of the 1960s-1970s, a refreshing reminder of the power of intersectional labor organizing; a raw look at the racism of the mainstream labor movement; and a very human chronicle of the struggles and flaws of courageous everyday workers at this critical time and place in history.

Despite so much depressing evidence to the contrary, professor Robert Ovetz argues that global workers' struggle is being reborn from the ashes of the old trade union movement. In this collection, international labor experts explain how Argentine truckers, Puerto Rican teachers, Chinese migrant laborers, Turkish delivery drivers, and other workers are analyzing geopolitical dynamics and seizing the levers of power in new and effective ways. Packed with analysis and charts like the “Credible Strike Threats Scorecard,” this is a gold mine for labor geeks who refuse to give up hope of overturning global capitalism.

 I love the blend of reporting and remembering in this book, as well as the skill Iversen brings to weaving them together. In 1992, a federal grand jury indicted the management of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver. The grand jury’s two-year investigation into the safety and environmental violations at the plant also produced a detailed and damning report, emphasizing the government’s efforts to cover up the danger that the plant posed to its employees and to people who lived nearby. The latter population included Iversen’s family.

Her childhood home, organized around the need to overlook her father’s alcoholism, drove her and her siblings outdoors into what looked like idyllic, pristine Colorado outer suburbia. There, they wandered about, rode their horses, and swam in the local creeks and lakes. Reading this, I could see some of what was coming. But it still surprises—and enrages.

I highly recommend this book to every parent. It is filled with gentle, practical wisdom in the setting of a frontier family. The father takes the time to teach through everyday experience and vivid analogies. We use his analogy of the “character house” all the time in our family. The mother has her own quiet strength, which the author shows more in the following books of the series. The book is also filled with the high energy and pranks of children, and the adventures of growing up on a ranch. A lovely true story, though be warned, you will cry at the end.

Fajardo-Anstine does many remarkable things in Woman of Light, but three of those things just blew me away. First, she anchors the novel in a city (Denver, 1930s). Cities are the forgotten truth of the American West, and they shouldn’t be. Second, she brings to life the “Lost Territories,” the Hispanic/Indigenous lands of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, long-cherished homes overrun by white settlement in the 19th century. Third, she builds the entire compelling narrative around a suite of Chicana/Indigenous women—and they are the strongest, liveliest characters you’ll ever meet. They work, they love, they breathe loyalty, they seek justice. This novel is a stylish eye-opener from start to finish. And it’ll forever change what you think you know about the region.

Perhaps the most widespread engagement by ordinary citizens in political relations is with the education of their children. School boards are increasingly regarded as a site of passionate political contest over what our children will learn, especially when it comes to learning history and its consequences for their understanding of their community and nation. Challenges of Ordinary Democracy reports on three years in the life of a local school board. The voices of administrators, teachers, parents, and the press are examined when dissent takes center stage in the school board’s deliberations. Given that ordinary citizens will disagree, often vehemently, Tracy asks us to consider the parameters of reasonable hostility and why reasonable hostility is important for the voices of ordinary citizens to matter in deciding issues that affect their lives.  

I read this book before I watched the TV series, and I admit that the series was not disappointing. The book reverts to prehistoric times for the origins of what was to become the town of Centennial in Colorado.

This is another story of the building of America, although from the opposite spectrum to my prior recommendation. It touches on the Indian tribes who fought long and hard to keep their land and continues on to cover all aspects of the eventual population, from trappers to cowboys and ranchers, and the hardships experienced in creating such a settlement in 1844.

I enjoy any book or TV series that shows the origins of how places or people came to be. This book certainly goes into such details and readers are pulled into the lives of several families through to relatively modern times. Mesmerising as only the expert storyteller James Michener can… show more.

This is an oldie, but a goodie. I think this was one of the first books that introduced me into the idea of genetic modification and what might be possible if we could harness DNA from the environment around us. One of the most popular powers to choose in my own book is wings, and when people fill out the questionnaire on my website, that’s what they want. This book brings together the romance of the ability to fly, the love of a found family, and the pace of a thriller with high stakes to lose. One of my favorite books of all time, one I can re-read again and again.