by Studs Terkel
*Ron’s lover.
More Great Studs Terkel Books From The New Press
Coming of Age: Growing Up in the Twentieth Century
A New York Times bestseller when it was first published in 1995, Coming of Age presents an astonishing portrait of American life and the experience of aging in the twentieth century, drawn from the stories of seventy-four very different people, the youngest of whom is seventy and the oldest ninety-nine. Inspiring in the honesty of their voices and their lack of nostalgia or illusions, these are people with the widest range of experiences from all around the country; many were at the vanguard of their movements, whether of trade unions, gay liberation, or the arts. They remind us what we once were, what we have lost, and the extraordinary extent to which we’ve been transformed as a society over the last hundred odd years.
The Studs Terkel Reader
The Studs Terkel Reader, originally published under the title My American Century, collects the best interviews from eight of Terkel’s classic oral histories together with his magnificent introductions to each work. Featuring selections from American Dreams, Coming of Age, Division Street, “The Good War”, The Great Divide, Hard Times, Race, and Working, this “greatest hits” volume is a treasury of Terkel’s most memorable subjects that will delight his many lifelong fans and provide a perfect introduction for those who have not yet experienced the joy of reading Studs Terkel. It includes an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Coles surveying Terkel’s overall body of work and a new foreword by Calvin Trillin.
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do
Perhaps Studs Terkel’s best-known book, Working is a compelling, fascinating look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from grave-diggers to studio heads, this book provides a timeless snapshot of people’s feelings about their working lives, as well as a relevant and lasting look at how work fits into American life.
Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation
A masterpiece of words, Working is now adapted into comic-book form by Harvey Pekar, the blue-collar antihero of his American Book Award–winning comics series American Splendor. Brilliantly scripting and arranging Terkel’s interviews, Pekar collaborated with established comics veterans and some of the comic underground’s brightest new talent, selected by editor Paul Buhle. Readers will find a visual palette of influences from Mexican, African American, superhero, and feminist art, each piece an electric melding of artist and subject. This is a book that will both delight Terkel fans and introduce his work to a whole new audience—a fitting tribute to an American legend.
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression
In this unique re-creation of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, and writers, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information but a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, revealing how the Depression affected the lives of those who experienced it firsthand. This book is also available in a beautiful illustrated edition featuring Farm Security Administration photographs from the Library of Congress.
“The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II
“The Good War”, for which Studs Terkel won the Pulitzer Prize, is a testament not only to the experience of war but to the extraordinary skill of Terkel as interviewer. As always, his subjects are open and unrelenting in their analyses of themselves and their experiences, producing what People magazine has called “a splendid epic history of World War II.” With this volume Terkel expanded his scope to the global and the historical, and the result is a masterpiece of oral history.
Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession
First published in 1992 at the height of the furor over the Rodney King incident, Studs Terkel’s Race was an immediate bestseller. In a rare and revealing look at how people in America truly feel about race, Terkel brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till’s mother are among those whose voices appear in Race. In all, nearly one hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: feelings about affirmative action, gentrification, secret prejudices, and dashed hopes.
Division Street: America
Division Street, Studs Terkel’s first book of oral history, established his reputation as America’s foremost oral historian and as “one of those rare thinkers who is actually willing to go out and talk to the incredible people of this country” (in the words of Tom Wolfe). Viewing the inhabitants of a single city, Chicago, as a microcosm of the nation at large, Division Street chronicles the thoughts and feelings of some seventy people from widely varying backgrounds in terms of class, race, and personal history. From a mother and son who migrated from Appalachia to a Native American boilerman, from a streetwise ex–gang leader to a liberal police officer, from the poorest African Americans to the richest socialites, these unique and often intimate first-person accounts form a multifaceted collage that defies any simple stereotype of America.
Touch and Go: A Memoir
Terkel takes us through his childhood and into his early experiences—as a law student during the Depression, as a young theatergoer, and eventually as an actor himself on both radio and the stage—offering a brilliant and often hilarious portrait of Chicago in the 1920s and ’30s. Describing his beginnings as a disc jockey after World War II, his involvement with progressive politics during the McCarthy era, and later his career as an interviewer and oral historian, Touch and Go is a testament to Terkel’s “generosity of spirit, sense of social justice, and commitment to capture on his ever-present tape recorder the voices of those who otherwise would not be heard” (The New York Times Book Review). It is a brilliant lifetime achievement from the man the Washington Post has called “the most distinguished oral historian of our time.”
Studs Terkel’s Chicago
In the tradition of E.B. White’s bestselling Here Is New York, here is a tribute to the “Second City”—part history, part memoir, and 100 percent Studs Terkel—infused with anecdotes, memories, and reflections that celebrate the great city of Chicago. Chicago was home to the country’s first skyscraper (a ten-story building built in 1884) and marks the start of the famed “Route 66.” It was also the birthplace of the remote control (Zenith) and the car radio (Motorola), and the first major American city to elect a woman (Jane Byrne) and then an African American man (Harold Washington) as mayor. Its literary and journalistic history is just as dazzling, featuring Nelson Algren, Mike Royko, and Sara Paretsky. From Al Capone to the street riots during the Democratic National Convention in 1968, Chicago, in the words of Studs himself, “has—as they used to whisper of the town’s fast woman—a reputation.” Chicago was of course also home to TerkeI himself for most of his ninety-six years. llustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs that perfectly capture Chicago’s unique beauty, here is a splendid evocation of Studs’s hometown in all of its glory and imperfection.
P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening
Millions of Terkel fans have come to know the prizewinning oral historian through his landmark books—“The Good War”, Hard Times, Working, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, and many others. Few people realize, however, that much of Studs’s best work was not collected into these thematic volumes and has, in fact, never been published. P.S. brings together these significant and deeply enjoyable writings for the first time. Here we have a fascinating conversation with James Baldwin, possibly Studs’s finest interview with an author; pieces on the colorful history and culture of Chicago; viv
id portraits of Studs’s heroes and cohorts (including an insightful and still timely interview with songwriter Yip Harburg, known for his “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”); and the transcript of Studs’s famous broadcast on the Depression, the very moving essence of what was to become Hard Times.
More New Press Titles of Interest
Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues by Bill Moyers
This “provocative” and “absorbing” (Star Tribune) companion book to Bill Moyer’s acclaimed PBS series invites readers into conversations with some of the most captivating voices on the scene today, in what Kirkus calls “a glittering array of discussions.” From Jon Stewart on politics and media to Michael Pollan on food, The Wire creator David Simon on the mean streets of our cities, James Cone and Shelby Steele on race in the age of Obama, Robert Bly and Nikki Giovanni on the power of poetry, Barbara Ehrenreich on the hard times of working Americans, and Karen Armstrong on faith and compassion, Moyer’s own intelligence and insight match that of his guests and their discussions animate many of the most salient issues of our time. With extensive commentary from Moyers, marked by his customary “respect, intelligence, curiosity, humor, and graciousness” (Booklist), here are the debates; cultural currents; and, above all, lively minds that shape the conversation of democracy.
A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City by Katherine S. Newman
An increasing portion of the U.S. population is about to retire. But the experience of middle and old age, as Harvard anthropologist Newman shows, differs dramatically for whites and minorities, for the middle class and the poor, and for those living in the suburbs versus the city. Focusing on the lives of elderly African Americans and Latinos in pockets of New York City where wages are low, crime is often high, and the elderly have few support systems they can rely on, A Different Shade of Gray provides “a well-documented portrait of a little-examined group” (Kirkus Reviews).
The Cushion in the Road: Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm’s Way by Alice Walker
In her newest collection of wide-ranging meditations on our intertwined personal, spiritual, and political destinies, Alice Walker writes that “we are beyond a rigid category of color, sex, or spirituality if we are truly alive.” For the millions of her devoted fans—and for readers of Walker’s bestselling 2006 book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For in particular—here is a new “gift of words” (Essence) that invites readers on a journey of political awakening and spiritual insight. The Cushion in the Road revisits themes the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist, and activist has addressed throughout her career: racism, Africa, solidarity with the Palestinian people, the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, Cuba, healthcare, and the work of Aung San Suu Kyi. In doing so, Walker explores her conflicting impulses to retreat into inner contemplation and to remain deeply engaged with the world. Through the evocative image of the meditation cushion in the road, she finds a delicate balance between these two paths and invites her readers to do so, too.
The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness into Flowers (New Poems) by Alice Walker
“Poetry is leading us,” writes Alice Walker in The World Will Follow Joy. In this luminous collection—a bestseller in hardcover—the beloved writer offers sixty poems to inspire and incite. Penetrating and sensitive, playful and wise, these intensely intimate poems establish a personal connection of rare immediacy between poet and reader, illustrating the very qualities that have won her a devoted following and continue to draw new readers to her writing. Attentively chronicling the conditions of human life today, Walker shows in her poetry her necessary political commitments, her compassion, and her spirituality. Casting her eye toward history, politics, and nature, as well as to world figures such as Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and the Dalai Lama, she is indeed a “muse for our times” (Amy Goodman).
Hold Fast to Dreams: A College Guidance Counselor, His Students, and the Vision of a Life Beyond Poverty by Beth Zasloff and Joshua Steckel
When Joshua Steckel left his job as a private school college counselor on New York City’s Upper East Side to work at a public high school in Brooklyn, he discovered that for low-income students, the competitive game of college admissions has entirely different rules and much higher stakes. Mike writes his personal essays from a homeless shelter and struggles with both his longing to get away and his guilt at the thought of leaving his family in desperate circumstances. Santiago, an undocumented student who has lived in Brooklyn since the age of six, battles bureaucracy and low expectations as he seeks a life outside the low-wage world of hard manual labor. Ashley, who pursues her ambition to become a doctor with almost superhuman drive, ultimately discovers her own definition of success in a prestige-obsessed world. Hold Fast to Dreams traces the pathways of ten of Josh’s students from their obstacle-ridden application processes through their world-changing college experiences. This important book uncovers, in heart-wrenching detail, the many ways the American education system fails to meet its promise as a ladder to opportunity. It also provides hope in its portrayal of the extraordinary intelligence, resilience, and everyday heroics of the young people whose futures are too often lamented or ignored and whose voices, insights, and vision our colleges—and our country—desperately need.
Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City by Barbara J. Miner
In a magisterial work of narrative nonfiction that weaves together the racially fraught history of public education in Milwaukee and the broader story of hypersegregation in the rust belt, Lessons from the Heartland tells of an iconic city’s fall from grace—and of its chance for redemption in the twenty-first century. A symbol of middle American working-class values and pride, Wisconsin—and in particular urban Milwaukee—has been at the forefront of a half-century of public education experiments, from desegregation and “school choice,” to vouchers and charter schools. Picking up where J. Anthony Lukas’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Common Ground left off, Lessons from the Heartland offers a sweeping narrative portrait of an all-American city at the epicenter of American public education reform, and an exploration of larger issues of race and class in our democracy. Miner (whose daughters went through the Milwaukee public school system and who is a former Milwaukee Journal reporter) brings a journalist’s eye and a parent’s heart to exploring the intricate ways that jobs, housing, and schools intersect, underscoring the intrinsic link between the future of public schools and the dreams and hopes of democracy in a multicultural society.
