Nickel and Dimed

Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist who also holds a doctorate in cell biology, set out to learn whether anyone could live on $6 an hour, prompted partly by welfare reform rhetoric that any job can lead to a better life. Between spring 1998 and summer 2000 she left home, took the cheapest lodgings available and accepted whatever work she was offered in Minnesota, Florida and Maine, as a Wal-Mart clerk, waitress, nursing-home aide, hotel maid and house cleaner. She found that no job is truly unskilled and that one low-wage job often cannot support one person. Expanded from a 1999 Harper's article, the book was first published in 2001. The Guardian later ranked it 13th among the century's 100 best books.

Facebook content strategist Angela Pham called it a look at how most of America survives and said empathetic business leaders need that perspective. Leah Lizarondo, co-founder of 412 Food Rescue, also named it in an interview about her reading.