Working by Studs Terkel (New Press, $17). My mother brought this book home from the library when I was 10, and I snatched it to read Terkel’s interview with a baseball player. To my surprise, I ended up staying for the bus drivers, strip miners, and schoolteachers. Hearing real grown-ups talk about what they did for a living was, for me, far more exciting than phantom tollbooths or Mrs. Frankweiler’s mixed-up files.
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Harper, $15). Flow is the mental state when the challenge before us is so exquisitely matched to our abilities that we lose our sense of time and forget ourselves in a function. Csikszentmihalyi’s contemporary classic reveals that we’re more likely to find flow at work than in leisure.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (Back Bay, $14). This darkly hilarious novel is a cautionary tale for white-collar workers. At a downward-spiraling ad agency, employees spend more time scarfing free doughnuts than doing work—all while fretting about “walking Spanish down the hall,” company lingo for being fired.
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The Organization Man by William H. Whyte (Univ. of Pennsylvania, $26). This remarkable 1956 book about the deadening effect of large companies reshaped the national conversation and recast its very vocabulary. Whyte, a Fortune editor, established the gold standard for writing about work.
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli (Wiley, $19). That simple T-shirt you’re wearing isn’t so simple after all. A Texas farmer grew the cotton, a Chinese worker spun the thread and cut the fabric, a Florida merchant placed it in his store, and a Tanzanian entrepreneur will resell it after you’ve donated it to the Salvation Army. Economist Rivoli visits the players in this international supply chain and weaves a gripping narrative.
Animal Farm by George Orwell (Plume, $14). A thrilling takeover. Corrupt, disengaged management. Beleaguered, underappreciated workers. You might think Orwell’s fable is an allegory of totalitarianism, but it’s also a mini-MBA in organizational behavior.
