I finally read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, and was pleasantly surprised.  Her runaway best-seller is what researchers call "radical ethnography"; to study low-skilled workers in America, Ehrenreich became a low-skilled worker in America.  Ehrenreich mostly just walks us through her experiment: how she found work, where she lived, what the jobs were like, how she made ends meet.  While there's ideological commentary throughout, she's less preachy than most of her competition.  My favorite part, though, comes in the final...