It’s not just the unofficial end to summer, but a day that is set aside to recognize the jobs that make the world go round so I thought I’d share a few favorites from over the years.

• Terkel’s comprehensive interviews of what people do and how they think about their jobs in Working.
• Montgomery highlights the life and work of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman (before the term existed) who revolutionized slaughterhouses in Temple Grandin: How the Girl Who Loves Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World.
• Ottaviani and Wicks paired up to focus on three women scientists working with Primates: Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas in Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas.
• The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives is Theresa Brown’s memoir as a nurse that I had the pleasure of Zooming with during the pandemic along with an Introduction to Medical Sciences class I collaborated with the teacher on to read the book and talk about nursing to high school students.
• Melissa Sweet pays homage to writer E.B. White in Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White.
• A riveting story of a woman who built a business as a cleaner called in by police, fire, and families after traumatic occurrences in The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster written by Krasnostein.
• Recipes and business acumen are on display in the teen adaptation of Onwuachi’s Notes From a Young Black Chef.
• Want a nice overview of labor? Look no further than Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States by Mann.
• And my love of cemeteries also means I love Catilin Doughty, the mortician talking about her work in the crematory and beyond in Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory.