Studs Terkel (1912–2008)
Author of Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do
About the Author
Studs Terkel was an actor, writer, and radio host. He was born Louis Terkel on May 16, 1912 in New York City. He took his name from the James T. Farrell novel, Studs Lonigan. Terkel attended the University of Chicago and graduated with a law degree in 1934. Terkel acted in local stage productions show more and on radio dramas until he began one of the first television programs, an unscripted show called Studs Place in the early 1950s. In 1952, Terkel began Studs Terkel's Almanac on radio station WFMT in Chicago. Terkel compiled a series of books based on oral histories that defined America in the 20th Century. Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do received a National Book Award nomination in 1975. The Good War: An Oral History of World War II won the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction in 1985. Working was turned into a hit musical in 1978. Terkel was named the Communicator of the Year by the University of Chicago in 1969. He also won a Peabody Award for excellence in journalism in 1980 and the National Book Foundation Medal for contributions to American letters in 1997. He died on October 31, 2008 at the age of 96. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Photo by Robert Birnbaum (courtesy of the photographer)
Works by Studs Terkel
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974) 2,351 copies, 24 reviews
Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession (1992) 565 copies, 5 reviews
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith (2001) 534 copies, 6 reviews
Boob Jubilee: The Mad Cultural Politics of the New Economy: Salvos from the Baffler (2003) — Foreword — 86 copies
Four Decades with Studs Terkel: A Compilation of Extraordinary Interviews from 40 Years of Broadcasting (1993) 4 copies
Working: Starring Eileen Barnett, Orson Bean, Harry Groener, Kaitlin Hopkins, Michael Kostroff, Kenna Ramsey, Vickilyn Reynolds, Vincent Tumeo and B.J. Ward (2001) 1 copy, 1 review
The Cold War 1 copy
Associated Works
This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women (2006) — Foreword — 1,144 copies, 36 reviews
The Man with the Golden Arm: 50th Anniversary Critical Edition (1999) — Contributor — 462 copies, 8 reviews
Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches (1986) — Foreword — 284 copies, 4 reviews
James Baldwin: The Last Interview: and other Conversations (The Last Interview Series) (2014) — Interviewer, some editions — 208 copies, 5 reviews
The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World (2007) — Contributor — 132 copies, 5 reviews
Semper Fi: Stories of the United States Marines from Boot Camp to Battle (2003) — Contributor — 34 copies, 1 review
Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration (Chicago Lives) (2003) — Foreword — 33 copies
Fire Fighters: Stories of Survival from the Front Lines of Firefighting (2002) — Contributor — 16 copies
The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War [1984 Documentary film] (1984) — Actor — 4 copies
The revolutionary poet in the United States : the poetry of Thomas McGrath (1988) — Contributor — 3 copies, 1 review
The history of Chess jazz — Contributor — 2 copies
Dissent, Winter 1972: Special Issue: The World of the Blue Collar Worker — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Terkel, Studs
- Legal name
- Terkel, Louis
- Birthdate
- 1912-05-16
- Date of death
- 2008-10-31
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Chicago (Ph.B|1932)
University of Chicago Law School (LL.B|1934) - Occupations
- writer
oral historian
radio host
television host
actor - Organizations
- Federal Writers' Project
Works Progress Administration
WFMT
Chicago History Museum
Army Air Forces (WWII)
Illinois Bar Association (1935) - Awards and honors
- Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1985)
National Humanities Medal (1997)
American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997)
George Polk Career Award (1999)
National Book Award, Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (1997)
Chicago History Museum "Making History Award" for Distinction in Journalism and Communications (1995) (show all 16)
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (2003)
Great Lakes Book Award (1998)
Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame (2001)
Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award (2004)
Order of Lincoln (2004)
Laureate, The Lincoln Academy of Illinois (2004)
Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award (2006)
Chicago Literary Hall of Fame (2010)
National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent (1999)
Peabody Award for Excellence in Journalism (1980) - Short biography
- Studs Terkel was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants. He moved with his parents to Chicago where his parents ran a boarding house. Though graduating from law school, Terkel chose not to practice law. He joined a theater group and did other work until he began writing. In the 1950's, he was blacklisted from television for refusing to sign a loyalty oath to CBS. He was married to social worker Ida Goldberg for 60 years before her death in 1999. Studs Terkel is survived by one son, Dan Terkel.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
Chicago, Illinois, USA - Place of death
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Burial location
- Ashes buried in Washington Square Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA (Bughouse Square)
- Associated Place (for map)
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
Members
Discussions
Division Street: America, by Studs Terkel, NOV 2024 LTER in Reviews of Early Reviewers Books (December 2024)
Reviews
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel
DNF. A more honest subtitle would be “People talk about all the ways their jobs suck and I extirpate any mention of joy or fulfillment they might stumble across.”
I’ve never seen such a pessimistic approach to the question of labor. It’s not because I don’t agree with the politics—I’m pretty far left, quite comfortable with socialism and a big supporter or upending the current power balance. But jesus, labor isn’t all Completely Fucking Awful. I’ve worked some pretty harsh show more jobs, and even then, there are bright moments. They make us human.
Honestly, this reads like a guy who has managed to avoid doing manual labor for a living, feels guilty about it (maybe because he grew up working class?), and compensates by adopting an extraordinarily negative view of it in order to feel like he’s supporting those who haven’t been as fortunate as he has. It doesn’t ring at all true, it doesn’t respect the lived experience of the people whose interviews he has excerpted, and it’s an absolute slog to read.
Like I said, DNF. show less
I’ve never seen such a pessimistic approach to the question of labor. It’s not because I don’t agree with the politics—I’m pretty far left, quite comfortable with socialism and a big supporter or upending the current power balance. But jesus, labor isn’t all Completely Fucking Awful. I’ve worked some pretty harsh show more jobs, and even then, there are bright moments. They make us human.
Honestly, this reads like a guy who has managed to avoid doing manual labor for a living, feels guilty about it (maybe because he grew up working class?), and compensates by adopting an extraordinarily negative view of it in order to feel like he’s supporting those who haven’t been as fortunate as he has. It doesn’t ring at all true, it doesn’t respect the lived experience of the people whose interviews he has excerpted, and it’s an absolute slog to read.
Like I said, DNF. show less
Division Street: America, was Terkel’s first collection of oral histories, composed of 70 voices collected in random interviews in and around Chicago. First published in 1967, it was re-issued in 1993 and 2006 prior to this 2024 incarnation, each time because, according to 2006 edition editor Alex Kotlowitz, the work continues to “ponder what holds us together and what keeps us apart.”
Interview subjects included elderly residents of Chicago, newcomers to the city, young people, a show more closeted gay man, blue-collar workers, executives, teachers, small-time grifters, community activists, and welfare moms. Not surprisingly, the areas of concern voiced by each of these groups tended to be homogeneous within that group.
Many of the topics of concern to Terkel’s subjects are still circling in the public mind, some of them wearing different clothing, others essentially unchanged over the years. We hear discomfort over the nuclear threat of the Cold War (returned today as worries about domestic terrorism); over American involvement in Vietnam (just as we hear it now about the Middle East conflicts); discomfort with changing race relations and civil rights (which have come around 60 years later transformed into gay rights, trans issues, and the conflict over abortion); resentment over new ethnic groups moving into old neighborhoods (little change there, though the targeted ethnicity has changed); laments over the loss of city neighborhoods to urban renewal (now to gentrification); and a general notion that the fix is always in and the little guy is always going to get shafted – a complaint probably as old as civilization itself.
These recurrent themes, particularly in the sections dedicated to voices of blue-collar workers, tend to become a bit tedious after a while. So do the interviews with disaffected teens whose aimlessness and vague aspirations for a better future seem to come without any understanding (let alone acknowledgement) of the dedication needed to achieve those goals. Things pick up toward the end of the book, when white-collar workers and middle-management executive types are interviewed, and when college students come into the mix with their enthusiasm and desire to organize for political change. (It might be cynical to mention this, but it should be noted that less than a year after these hopeful interviews were printed, many of those very same young activists turned the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago into a slugfest.)
As a snapshot of what has become known as “middle America”, Division Street: America remains an important document. As a reflection of who and where we are as a nation today, it holds the seeds of much of our current discontent. Not every reader will find it totally satisfying, but it is worth the investment of time, as a study in perspective if nothing else. show less
Interview subjects included elderly residents of Chicago, newcomers to the city, young people, a show more closeted gay man, blue-collar workers, executives, teachers, small-time grifters, community activists, and welfare moms. Not surprisingly, the areas of concern voiced by each of these groups tended to be homogeneous within that group.
Many of the topics of concern to Terkel’s subjects are still circling in the public mind, some of them wearing different clothing, others essentially unchanged over the years. We hear discomfort over the nuclear threat of the Cold War (returned today as worries about domestic terrorism); over American involvement in Vietnam (just as we hear it now about the Middle East conflicts); discomfort with changing race relations and civil rights (which have come around 60 years later transformed into gay rights, trans issues, and the conflict over abortion); resentment over new ethnic groups moving into old neighborhoods (little change there, though the targeted ethnicity has changed); laments over the loss of city neighborhoods to urban renewal (now to gentrification); and a general notion that the fix is always in and the little guy is always going to get shafted – a complaint probably as old as civilization itself.
These recurrent themes, particularly in the sections dedicated to voices of blue-collar workers, tend to become a bit tedious after a while. So do the interviews with disaffected teens whose aimlessness and vague aspirations for a better future seem to come without any understanding (let alone acknowledgement) of the dedication needed to achieve those goals. Things pick up toward the end of the book, when white-collar workers and middle-management executive types are interviewed, and when college students come into the mix with their enthusiasm and desire to organize for political change. (It might be cynical to mention this, but it should be noted that less than a year after these hopeful interviews were printed, many of those very same young activists turned the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago into a slugfest.)
As a snapshot of what has become known as “middle America”, Division Street: America remains an important document. As a reflection of who and where we are as a nation today, it holds the seeds of much of our current discontent. Not every reader will find it totally satisfying, but it is worth the investment of time, as a study in perspective if nothing else. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
The best way to read "The Good War" is to sit down with a cup of coffee and envision a WWII vet sitting across from you. He has a faraway look in his eyes and a slight tremor in his hands as he remembers best a single event that most likely changed his life forever. But, don't stop there. Now sitting across from you could be a businessman, a nurse, a dress maker, a dancer, a man who was just a child during the war and thought the battlefield was place of adventure. you might imagine someone show more who survived a prison camp, or a conscientious objector, or a young boy who thought enlisting would be a chance to prove himself...Terkel interviewed people from all walks of life. Each story is unique and yet, yet hauntingly similar. You hear of young men losing their sense of humanity in the face of unimaginable cruelty: a man remembers watching his comrade in arms throw pebbles into the open skull of a dead Japanese soldier; the smell of cooking cats. Other young men speak of hiding their sexual orientation while trying to appear manly enough for battle (Ted Allenby's story reminded me of Ryan O'Callaghan a great deal). But, you also hear from the women: wives and girlfriends left behind, Red Cross nurses on the front lines, even singers sent to entertain the troops. It is easy to see why this stunning nonfiction won a Pulitzer. show less
"The Good War" is a collection of over a hundred interviews with veterans and civilians about their experiences during to WWII, conducted some forty years after the fact. What stands out the most for me is the realness of every voice – this genuinely reads like a pure, unfiltered transcription of each person’s own words. It’s not just a compilation of war stories, although there are plenty of them here, it’s also about how people’s outlooks shifted and their lives were dramatically show more changed. For some it was the best thing that could have happened to them, and for others it was the worst. The significance of the quotation marks around the title was lost on me before I read this but now they are the most defining thing about the book. show less
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- Also by
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- Popularity
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- Rating
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- ISBNs
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