By the time Jerry Mitchell’s book was published in 2020, I’d already spent several years covering his work reviving cold cases . “ Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era ” quickly became one of my favorite nonfiction books written by a journalist.

I appreciated how he showed the grueling, day-to-day work local journalism requires, and how many layers of people fought him in revealing the despicable work of the Ku Klux Klan.

Ahead of our second Breaking Into Books , a nonfiction book writing workshop with retired Columbia University professor and journalist Sam Freedman , I asked a few of our instructors and guest speakers about their favorite nonfiction books by journalists.

Here’s what they said:

Sam Freedman, retired journalism professor and author of several books, including “Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights”

“Common Ground.…