Urging us to preserve history, Terkel said, “Think of what’s stored in an 80 or 90-year-old mind. Although there were hundreds of attendees, Terkel was easy to spot in his red-and-white checked shirt as he comfortably mingled among the tuxedoed-and-evening-gown crowd. I had dinner with Terkel in the late ’90s at a benefit where he was honored with a humanitarian award. Of those characters, Terkel said, “Pretty much everyone might be worth trying to talk to.” He described their voices as “the sound of a nation spontaneously unburdening itself to the first person who had thought to ask.” We’re fortunate that Studs Terkel was that person. lawyers, receptionists, barbers, firemen, janitors, stockbrokers, and everyone in between. Working was one of the most popular books with my high school students, whose families’ diverse backgrounds aligned with the book’s disparate characters. But his book which truly championed the uncelebrated, Working (1974), was his account of people’s working lives. Next came Hard Times (1970), conversations with Americans who lived through the Depression. Terkel’s first book on oral history, Division Street: America (1967), contained interviews with seventy Chicagoans. Terkel’s working gigs included radio news commentator, disc jockey, newspaper columnist, host of a daily radio program, and television character in his own improvised sitcom, Studs’ Place, playing himself as a restaurant owner. When he was rejected from serving in the army due to a perforated eardrum, he joined the Red Cross. The name stuck.Īfter earning his law degree from the University of Chicago, Terkel produced radio shows under the Federal Writers Project.

Studs got his nickname because he reminded people of author James T. No wonder his books are filled with such memorable characters. His father opened a rooming house for immigrants, which introduced the young Terkel to people of all cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Louis “Studs” Terkel was born in the Bronx in 1912 to Russian-Jewish parents who relocated to Chicago when he was eleven.

Studs terkel books