Reading List

Authors Like Jessica Bruder

Linda May was living out of a small trailer when Jessica Bruder met her, one of hundreds of older Americans following seasonal work across the West: Amazon's CamperForce warehouses in the autumn, the sugar-beet harvest, campground hosting in summer. Bruder spent three years with them, bought a van of her own and worked some of the jobs beside them. Nomadland (2017) became the film that won three Oscars in 2021, though the book follows the real people the film turned into fiction. Her other books are Burning Book (2007), on Burning Man, and Snowden's Box (2020), written with Dale Maharidge. The ten below were chosen on two counts: each spent months or years beside people working to stay afloat, and each lets the economy show through individual lives.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Immersion journalism · Work and poverty · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Jessica Bruder's Nomadland, the closest match is Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed works the same low-wage jobs from the inside. For housing, the force that pushed many of Bruder's nomads onto the road, read Matthew Desmond; for the British version inside an Amazon warehouse, James Bloodworth; and for the older tradition, Studs Terkel and George Orwell. J.D. Vance reaches a different conclusion about the same America. Each entry below says how they got alongside their subjects.

Every book by Jessica Bruder →

Where to start if you loved Jessica Bruder

If you want the closest match, read Barbara Ehrenreich.

Nickel and Dimed. Three states, six jobs, one budget that never adds up.

If you want to know why people lose their homes, read Matthew Desmond.

Evicted. Eight families in Milwaukee, and the landlords.

If you want the British Amazon warehouse, read James Bloodworth.

Hired. Six months of low-paid work across Britain.

If you want the French version, read Florence Aubenas.

The Night Cleaner. Six months of cleaning in Normandy.

If you want the opposite argument, read J.D. Vance.

Hillbilly Elegy. The same America, a different explanation.

If you want more reporting like this

My list of the best investigative journalism books has the rest.

10 authors like Jessica Bruder

01
The same jobs, from the inside · Closest match

Barbara Ehrenreich

American · Nickel and Dimed (2001), Bright-Sided (2009)

For Nickel and Dimed Ehrenreich worked as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide and Walmart associate in Florida, Maine and Minnesota between 1998 and 2000, and tried to live on what she earned. The book became a standard text on low-wage America. She died in 2022.

Alongside:Two years in low-wage jobs in three states, from 1998 to 2000.

Through one life:Her own budget, month by month, as the evidence.

Nickel and Dimed is the book Nomadland is most often compared to, and the comparison holds: both writers work beside the people they describe and let the arithmetic of a paycheck make the argument. Ehrenreich is sharper and angrier; Bruder stays closer to her subjects and lets them speak.

— Lisanne

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02
The housing behind the road

Matthew Desmond

American · Evicted (2016), Poverty, by America (2023)

Desmond, a sociologist at Princeton, lived in a Milwaukee trailer park and a rooming house to follow eight families through the eviction process. Evicted won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 2017.

Alongside:Months living in a Milwaukee trailer park and rooming house.

Through one life:Eight households followed through eviction.

Desmond, a sociologist, lived among the tenants he wrote about and builds Evicted on eight families, the same human scale Bruder uses for her nomads. His subject is housing, which is also what pushed most of the people in Nomadland into their vans.

— Lisanne

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03
The ones who stayed

Amy Goldstein

American · Janesville (2017)

Goldstein, a Washington Post reporter, followed families in Janesville, Wisconsin for years after the General Motors plant there closed in 2008. Janesville was named the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year in 2017.

Alongside:Years following families in Janesville, Wisconsin, after the General Motors plant closed.

Through one life:Workers, teachers and officials, each carrying part of the story.

Goldstein shows what happens when the job that defined a town disappears, which is where many of the lives in Nomadland begin. Bruder follows people who left; Goldstein follows the ones who stayed.

— Lisanne

Every book by Amy Goldstein →

04
The road, a generation earlier

Ted Conover

American · Rolling Nowhere (1984), Newjack (2000)

Conover rode freight trains with hobos for Rolling Nowhere and, after the New York prison system refused him access as a reporter, spent a year working as a corrections officer at Sing Sing for Newjack, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Alongside:Months riding freight trains with hobos for Rolling Nowhere.

Through one life:He joins the life instead of interviewing it.

Conover rode the rails as a student and has spent his career inside other people's working lives. Rolling Nowhere is an earlier version of Nomadland: Americans on the move, a world with its own rules, and a reporter who lives in it.

— Lisanne

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05
Paid by the institution

Shane Bauer

American · A Sliver of Light (2014), American Prison (2018)

Bauer was held in Iran for twenty-six months after being arrested near the Iraqi border in 2009. In 2014 and 2015 he worked for four months as a guard at a private prison in Louisiana, under his own name, for Mother Jones; American Prison sets that experience against two centuries of profit from prisoners.

Alongside:Four months as a guard in a private prison in Louisiana.

Through one life:His own shifts set against two centuries of profit from prisoners.

Bauer takes a job inside the system he is investigating, as Bruder took work in Amazon's warehouses. His subject is harsher, but the method — being paid by the institution you are describing — is the same.

— Lisanne

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06
Not American · The British Amazon warehouse

James Bloodworth

British · The Myth of Meritocracy (2016), Hired (2018), Lost Boys (2025)

For Hired Bloodworth spent six months in low-paid jobs across Britain: an Amazon warehouse in Rugeley, home care in Blackpool, a call centre in south Wales, and driving for Uber in London. His earlier book argued that working-class children still end up in working-class jobs.

Alongside:Six months in low-paid jobs across Britain, from an Amazon warehouse to Uber.

Through one life:Each job a town, each town part of the argument.

Bloodworth also worked inside an Amazon warehouse, in Rugeley in Staffordshire, and Hired is the British counterpart to Nomadland. It is more openly political, but scenes from the warehouse floor could almost swap between the two books.

— Lisanne

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07
Not American · The French version

Florence Aubenas

French · The Night Cleaner (Le Quai de Ouistreham, 2010)

Aubenas, a well-known French reporter who had been held hostage in Iraq in 2005, registered at a job centre in Caen as an unemployed woman with no qualifications and spent six months in cleaning jobs, including on the cross-Channel ferries at Ouistreham. The book was filmed in 2021 with Juliette Binoche.

Alongside:Six months as a cleaner in Caen and on the ferries at Ouistreham.

Through one life:Her colleagues' lives, not her own discomfort, at the centre.

Aubenas registered at a job centre as an unemployed woman with no qualifications and took whatever cleaning work came. Her restraint about herself and her attention to the women around her are the qualities Nomadland readers tend to value most.

— Lisanne

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08
Older than the genre

Studs Terkel

American · Working (1974), “The Good War” (1984)

Terkel built books out of interviews with ordinary Americans, edited so that their own voices carry them. Working gathers more than a hundred people talking about their jobs; “The Good War”, an oral history of the Second World War, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985.

Alongside:More than a hundred interviews with Americans about their jobs.

Through one life:The worker's own voice, edited and barely interrupted.

Working is the ancestor of every book on this list: people describing their jobs in their own words. Bruder's long quotations from the nomads come from the same instinct to get out of the way.

— Lisanne

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09
Older than the genre · The first tramps

George Orwell

British · Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

Before the novels that made him famous, Orwell washed dishes in Paris hotel kitchens and lived among tramps in England for Down and Out in Paris and London, and travelled through the mining towns of the north for The Road to Wigan Pier, whose second half is an argument about class and socialism.

Alongside:Months washing dishes in Paris and on the road with tramps in England.

Through one life:Plain reporting, with the argument saved for the end.

Down and Out in Paris and London came out more than eighty years before Nomadland, and Orwell's tramps walking between workhouses are recognisably the ancestors of Bruder's van-dwellers moving between jobs.

— Lisanne

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10
A different conclusion

J.D. Vance

American · Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir of growing up in Middletown, Ohio, in a family with roots in Appalachian Kentucky. It argues that family breakdown and culture, as much as economic forces, keep poor white Americans poor. Vance later entered politics and became Vice President of the United States in 2025.

Alongside:His own family, in Middletown, Ohio, and in Appalachian Kentucky.

Through one life:Memoir rather than reporting: his own life is the case.

Hillbilly Elegy covers some of the same ground — working-class America after the factories — and reaches a different conclusion, putting more weight on family and culture than on economic forces. Reading it next to Nomadland is a clear way to see where the argument about American poverty lies.

— Lisanne

Frequently asked questions about authors like Jessica Bruder

Who should I read if I love Jessica Bruder?

Barbara Ehrenreich is the closest match: Nickel and Dimed works low-wage jobs from the inside. Matthew Desmond, Amy Goldstein and Ted Conover write about American work and housing at the same human scale, Shane Bauer, James Bloodworth and Florence Aubenas took jobs inside the systems they describe, Studs Terkel and George Orwell are the older tradition, and J.D. Vance reaches a different conclusion about the same America.

What books are similar to Nomadland?

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (2001) is the closest. After it come Evicted by Matthew Desmond (2016), Hired by James Bloodworth (2018), Janesville by Amy Goldstein (2017) and, much older, Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (1933).

Is Nomadland a true story?

Yes. Nomadland is non-fiction, based on three years Bruder spent with older Americans living in vans and following seasonal work. The 2021 film fictionalises it around a character played by Frances McDormand, but several real people from the book, including Linda May and Swankie, appear in it as themselves.

What is CamperForce?

CamperForce is Amazon's programme for hiring people who live in RVs and vans to work in its warehouses during the busy season before Christmas. Bruder describes it in Nomadland and worked a shift herself.

Has Jessica Bruder written other books?

Yes: Burning Book (2007), a visual history of Burning Man, and Snowden's Box (2020), written with Dale Maharidge. My guide to all three Jessica Bruder books covers each one.

Nothing here was suggested by a machine. I picked these ten myself, and the reasons are on the page.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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