Comments on: Work Books

Question: Work Books

jonmc — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:58:31 -0800

Books About Work.

I really enjoy people writing about various jobs, like Ben Hamper's Rivethead (autoworker), Mike Cherry's On High Steel (ironworker), Reg Theriault's How To Tell When You're Tired(longshoreman) and a section of JC Herz's Joystick Nation (game programmers). I'm not looking for dry sociological treatises or polemics, but personal acconts. They don't have to be blue-collar jobs neccessarily, I'd be interested in such books from retail clerks and office or tech workers, too. Fire away with suggestions.

By: jamaro

jamaro — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:11:15 -0800

They've been around forever, but are still enjoyable: James Herriot's books about being a veterinarian.

By: Miko

Miko — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:14:53 -0800

Looking for a Ship

By: mshrike

mshrike — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:17:22 -0800

Studs Terkel - Working

By: DrSkrud

DrSkrud — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:21:59 -0800

I'm almost finished reading Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, which is essentially Lou Gerstner's account of his time as IBM's CEO, when he pulled the company out of the rut it was in and turned it around. It's a surprisingly compelling read!

By: Rykey

Rykey — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:23:30 -0800

Sabotage in the American Workplace is a little dated, but still pretty funny and full of pissed-off worker stories.

There are also work-related zines like these. Not books per se, but (perhaps by definition) more personal and honest than many books.

By: Rykey

Rykey — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:24:35 -0800

Oh yeah, 2nding Terkel's Working.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:28:37 -0800

I've already read Working, but good suggestion. I'm more looking for book length treatments of a single-profession by someone who's done that profession.

By: robcorr

robcorr — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:29:14 -0800

Rykey's link is definitely a book, based on the Dishwasher zines of the same name. I just finished reading it; it's pretty good.

By: thehmsbeagle

thehmsbeagle — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:33:59 -0800

Ooh! Yes! I love these books, too. I'll have to check out the ones you listed.

I recommend:

Strip City (About being a stripper.)

Dishwasher (About being a professional traveling dishwasher.)

Blue Blood (About being an NYPD cop. And one of my favorite books of all time.)

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:41:06 -0800

Seconding: Looking for a Ship, John McPhee.
Con Men: The Big Con (NOT the Jonathan Chait book).
Wall Street: When Genius Failed, (with a bit part for papa hotBot) and Lairs Poker.

By: jason's_planet

jason's_planet — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:45:41 -0800

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing about life as a prison guard.

By: rdc

rdc — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:46:38 -0800

A couple that leap to mind -

Programmer (in VBasic, but hey): Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine

Funeral director: Thomas Lynch's The Undertaking

Nice question, by the way.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:52:38 -0800

I loved Newjack and Blue Blood, too (it made me take the idea of becoming a cop more seriously). We're on the right track. (I work unloading boxes in a used bookstore, so I have advance access to this stuff, heh-heh)

By: pretzel

pretzel — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:09:08 -0800

Great thread..here's a few more-

21 Dog Years : Doing Time @ Amazon.com

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

What Should I do with My Life?

By: MsMolly

MsMolly — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:16:23 -0800

Big Dead Place

By: O9scar

O9scar — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:21:20 -0800

Somewhere between a book about food and a book about a job is Heat, by Bill Buford

By: david1230

david1230 — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:41:34 -0800

Good timing - Boldtype just sent the October issue and it's theme is jobs.

By: stefanie

stefanie — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:49:33 -0800

Gig is a collection of interviews with people about their jobs. It covers a really wide range of occupations (crime scene cleaner, lobbyist, transvestite prostitute, florist, and about 100 more) that you've heard of but never knew about in any kind of detail.

(Yeah, I know it's not a book-length discussion of a single job, but it's still an awesome book about working life. If you see it, definitely grab it.)

By: Abiezer

Abiezer — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:54:40 -0800

Bukowski's Post Office

By: BoscosMom

BoscosMom — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:55:41 -0800

Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America ...
Barbara Ehrenreich took several minumum wage jobs to see if it was even possible to live on the resulting pay check and then wrote this book on the experience.

By: crush-onastick

crush-onastick — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:25:23 -0800

Defending the Damned about the Cook County Public Defender's Office Murder Task Force is getting a lot of praise from my former colleagues. I read Courtroom 302; although it was well-written, I didn't find it terribly compelling, possibly because it was so familiar to me. It got excellent reviews however.

By: mothershock

mothershock — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:25:45 -0800

I have to second Gig -- it's really amazing!

By: cybercoitus interruptus

cybercoitus interruptus — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:36:02 -0800

Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors and Street-Corner Punks, 1950-1965
Personal account (despite the title) by a guy who became a tattoo artist after he got tired of being an English prof.

By: goo

goo — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:44:37 -0800

Sydney Biddle Barrows' Mayflower Madam is quite an interesting read about running a high-end escort service in Manhattan in the 80s.

I know the question is about books, but the radio series Clare in the Community is a funny look at the life of a social worker - you can pretend it's an audio book.

By: chrominance

chrominance — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:10:02 -0800

Thirding Gig, which by the way acknowledges its debt to Terkel's Working. If you like one, chances are you'll like the other.

By: judith

judith — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:24:50 -0800

Zac Unger's Working Fire is a good companion for Blue Blood.

By: paulsc

paulsc — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:30:43 -0800

It's not his best known work, but it's certainly enjoyable, and great look at custom carpentry, as a job. House by Tracy Kidder.

By: concrete

concrete — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:07:51 -0800

The Perfect Storm Has some information on commercial fishing.

By: crocomancer

crocomancer — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:56:53 -0800

The Wrench by Primo Levi. About various things, but lots of engineering tales in here.

By: JanetLand

JanetLand — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 06:34:44 -0800

The Hotel: Backstairs at the World's Most Exclusive Hotel. Not a first person account, but really fascinating.

By: box

box — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 06:43:15 -0800

Nthing Working and Gig.

And I'm a little surprised that nobody has mentioned David Simon's Homicide. If you like that, you might also enjoy some of Joseph Wambaugh's nonfiction police stuff.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:01:44 -0800

I just finished Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris. it's a novel, but it's set in an advertising office and it's so neck-deep in truth-feeling that I'm pretty sure Ferris must be writing really heavily from experience.

The book that all office-working writers say they're going to write, turning all of their negative experience at the office into useful material? This is that book, done really well.

By: frecklefaerie

frecklefaerie — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:09:02 -0800

Not a novel, but I can see you enjoying Bartleby the Scrivener.

By: Toekneesan

Toekneesan — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:01:02 -0800

Bartleby is about going to the office and not working. Still, it's a hoot and worth looking at.

Also loved Working, but it's pretty dated.

The Art of Work, though published as a textbook, is a literary anthology that offers a pretty good sampling of various workplace literatures.

By: DZ-015

DZ-015 — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:14:26 -0800

"Serpico" a true story of New York City policeman Frank Serpico. Was also a film by Sidney Lumet starring Al Pacino.

By: ericb

ericb — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:17:52 -0800

Life Work by Donald Hall

The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, The Reach of a Chef: Beyond the Kitchen by Michael Ruhlman

Walk On Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Ruhlman

Among Schoolchildren by Tracy Kidder

Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference by Mark Edmundson

Blue-Collar Journal: A College President's Sabbatical by John Coleman

The Headmaster by John McPhee

The Crofter and the Laird by John McPhee

By: ericb

ericb — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:21:49 -0800

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

By: DarkForest

DarkForest — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:10:06 -0800

Sort of about working and not working:
The Cliff Walk: A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found
A Man with No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer

By: beautifulstuff

beautifulstuff — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:49:55 -0800

I really loved Scott Rosenberg's book, "Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, And One Quest For Transcendent Software". Scott spent years observing developers at the Open Source Applications Foundation trying to develop a new email/scheduling application. It's the book I recommend to non-IT people when they ask me to explain what I do.

By: Kinbote

Kinbote — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 19:11:06 -0800

Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer by Henry Petroski

also

The Courage of his Convictions by Robert Allerton

By: SisterHavana

SisterHavana — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:35:51 -0800

The Haldeman Diaries, by H.R. Haldeman. Absolutely fascinating.

By: goo

goo — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:14:06 -0800

Being an Actor by Simon Callow is a great look at the actor's craft, particularly for British theatre in the 80s.

By: Gucky

Gucky — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:36:56 -0800

My favorite is From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor by Jerry Della Femina. It's not modern, but it's a great peek into the "Mad Men" era copywriter day-to-day.

There have been a few really interesting books on being an undertaker since "Six Feet Under" went on the air, but none I'd specifically recommend.

By: BT

BT — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:26:19 -0800

Just out, and getting great reviews: Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster. Seconding the recommendation of Blue Blood.