If you want to know more about the working class and you want to read one book . . .
Michèle Lamont, The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
If you want to read five more, add:
Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. New York: New Press, 2016.
Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Jennifer Sherman, Those Who Work, Those Who Don’t: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. New York: Harper, 2016.
Julie Bettie, Women Without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
Jonathan Cobb and Richard Sennett, The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
Naomi Gerstell and Dan Clawson, Unequal Time: Gender, Class, and Family in Employment Schedules. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014.
Joseph T. Howell, Hard Living on Clay Street: Portraits of Blue Collar Families, revised edition with a new Preface and Epilogue. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2017.
Maria Kefalas, Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Lillian B. Rubin, Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family. New York: Basic Books, 1963.
If you want to read more about the professional elite:
Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989.
Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1992.