If you'd like to add a bit more about the intersection of race and class, I'd encourage these books

American Apartheid by Massey and Denton
-describes modern day segregation, and institutional racism, particularly in housing and education.

Saving Our Sons by Marita Golden
-is about raising black sons in a world that is very hostile to black men.

Everyday Courage by Niobe Way
-is about about urban and working class adolescents

And, in the same vein as some of the stuff you already have, even though it's a bit outdated,
The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner.
-describes how much of American popular culture is based on fear.

In bookstores at the moment there is a pretty new book about the power of corporations and how a relatively small number of people have a lot of power and how they affect the world. I can't remember the title but I think it's basically about that.
There's Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed.
Similar to Fast Food Nation is The Way we Eat: Why our food choices matter.

Since the majority of the students are going into some for of health care, I strongly recommend The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. It follows a family of non-English speaking Hmong refuges who try to navigate the public healthcare system to get care for their young, epileptic daughter. This work will expose students to a different cultural persepctive, to a patients experience of the public health care system, to the refugee experience, and to the story of the Unites States' involvement in Laos during the Vietnam era. And the best part is that it is a beautifully written book.

Similar in theme to Free Lunch is What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray N. Rothbard.

You can even read it in its entirety online here.

I enthusiastically recommend The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by David K. Shipler. Very well researched/cited and thorough but very readable for the average person (a rarity in books coming from a scholarly bent). Much like Nickel and Dimed, this book takes a look at the realities of people trying to get by on several part-time jobs, or low-paying full-time jobs while trying to juggle the other parts of life. Puts a more comprehensive face on the "lazy people who just want government handouts" strawman that conservatives like to hold up. This book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction. An eye-opener, especially for anyone who has grown up privileged and isolated from those who are not.

But since you already have that one on the list, another suggestion would be Privilege, Power, and Difference, by Allan G. Johnson. It's not long, about 150 pages plus citations and extras, but also very readable and conversational examination of many types of privilege in a non-threatening way. The author, a white male, uses himself, his experiences and growing awareness, as anecdotes to introduce his points and also gracefully works in the "unpacking the knapsack" list of not only male privilege, but heterosexual, white, ablist, etc. privilege. The tone is one of starting a self-examination process and an open dialogue...about the most gentle presentation of this topic that I've seen.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It opens your eyes to the injustices that our history textbook hides, and unveils the process by which we deceive ourselves. It starts out with an account of what really happened with our invasion of Native American land, and continues to cover the lack of discussion within textbooks concerning topics of race and class. Most importantly, it emphasizes the need to teach American history through discussion and debate, not a mindless drone of exemplary facts.

Dalton Conley's book Honky is also a good one for talking about intersections of race and class, and the writing style is very accessible to non-social-scientists. It's about a white guy growing up in a poor black neighborhood. Another good accessible one is Coyotes by Ted Conover. The author crosses the border into the U.S. from Mexico with a group of undocumented immigrants and describes the experience of crossing and getting jobs from (almost) their perspective. Both are conversational in tone and fairly jargon-free, they have funny anecdotes to keep reader interest, and they're good for giving students someone else's perspective without seeming really formal or beating them over the head with the point. Good luck!

I use a similar project in my freshman seminar and use some of the books you already have on the list. Some others that have been popular with the students are Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border , Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, and Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho. This last one is not so much an issue of social justice, although the boys in question lived isolated lives of poverty before "escaping," but it's a student favorite that gets them thinking about life experiences that are drastically diferent from their own.

Good luck! I always find the freshman seminar to be one of the most rewarding and challenging courses to teach.

Male Practice by Robert S. Mendelsohn

It's an older book discussing the medical establishments treatment of women as patients, but it hits on points that are still prominent today. Of course, the title might be a bit too much.

Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan

Revolves around the story of Emmett Till who was killed for whistling at a white woman.

Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines

"n a small Cajun community in 1940s Louisiana, a young black man is about to go to the electric chair for murder. A white shopkeeper had died during a robbery gone bad; though the young man on trial had not been armed and had not pulled the trigger, in that time and place, there could be no doubt of the verdict or the penalty."

Saving Grace by Lee Smith

About Grace, the daughter of a traveling evangelist who takes up serpents and drinks strychnine to cement his faith. Throughout the novel, Grace finds herself cut off not only from the religion of her parents but from herself. A lot of themes of sin and salvation in this one.

Reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor.

God, we should just do this to exchange book ideas for our own reading. There's a lot of good ones listed here, and books I haven't read that sound great. Like I need to add more titles to my already insurmountable reading list...

I'd recommend Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer. He's a physician/anthropologist out of Boston who does a lot of work in Haiti. He writes about health care as a right, and a more social-justice oriented approach to health care (what he terms liberation theology). Since a plurality of your students are nursing students, they might find it particularly relevant to their work in other classes.

Thank you guys so much for all the additional books and feedback on the ones on the list! I really appreciate it. I am going to try to have the list finalized by Monday, as they have a chance to start picking their books next Wednesday. I am the type of person to work up to the last minute, so anyone who wants to add anything up until then is more than welcome to!

Squeezle, it is kinda ironic/coincidental you recommended that book. I am in California's Central Valley and not only is there a large Hmong population here but at least four of my students in that class are Hmong.

Stiffed, Susan Faludi
The Mismeasure of Woman, Carol Tavris
Reasonable Creatures, Katha Pollitt

American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare
by Jason DeParle

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations about Race
by Beverly Daniel Tatum

Feminism is for Everybody
by bell hooks

Global Woman : Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy
by Arlie Russell Hochschild & Barbara Ehrenreich

I LOVED Can't Buy My Love. That said, I seem to recall it being a bit skimpy in terms of race and possibly class analysis. (I read it right after Susan Faludi's Backlash, so I might be mixing the two a wee bit, though). I did think it did a great job of linking advertising to addiction and unhealthy practices, and it definitely opened my eyes to the subtler ways in which advertising affects us.

As long as the topic doesn't need to be strictly American, I would also strongly recommend Tracy Kidder's _Mountains Beyond Mountains_. It's about Paul Farmer, a physician and activist who was mentioned in one of the posts above. I haven't read Farmer's book, but this book is an extraordinary examination of his social justice-oriented medical crusade in Haiti attempting to eliminate tuberculosis.

And if you don't mind your students reading a book of essays, the NY Times series on class (entitled _Class Matters_) from around 2005 is out in book form, and also available online at the NYT website. I teach an American Studies course for high school juniors, and I assigned that as summer reading this year. It ended up being a hit.

Good luck!