A interdisciplinary class that dealt with social/cultural norms related to warfare involved some short stories and James Webb’s "Fields of Fire."ISTR reading a chapter/excerpt from Haldeman’s Forever War for it as well.
Some of the various department classes I took for my area study in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe involved Russian fiction. There were also some “non-fiction” propaganda works that only loosely related to actual facts so they should be included as well.
“The Jungle” was reading for high school history.
“1984” and “The Republic” made it in there come college but I forget for which classes.
I remember “The John Jones Dollar” and Isaac Asimov’s "The Fun They Had."there was another one, and I will have to see if I can figure out what it was,ma out someone who could do arithmetic in his head and stunned everyone.
I don’t think Asimov’s was math related as much as school related because the kids complained a bit about having to be there.
Oh good! I made the edit window! The one I forgot was also Asimov. It was “The Feeling of Power.”
Several posts have mentioned The Jungle (Upton Sinclair). I think every American should read this and also Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck). For history students in particular, I would also add the non-fiction work How The Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis (1890), photojournalism book describing life in the squalid tenements. (ETA: Full text on-line here including photos, not PDF.)
The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, Norton Juster, 1963. Cute little storybook, allegedly inspired by Flatland about a stodgy straight line who was hopelessly in love with a dot, but the dot was in love with a shapeless squiggle. Made into a 10-minute animated short by Chuck Jones.
ETA: Two non-fiction books about math that I think should be required reading: Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos. Why Johnny Can’t Add by Morris Kline. A screed against “New Math”.