From our archives: Studs Terkel

Voices, and a few virtuosos (September 3, 2005)It’s tempting to mock this uneven collection of conversations as an attempt by Studs Terkel, now 93, to squeeze every penny out of every inch of recording tape he’s used in four decades of collecting oral histories. It’s tempting to complain that the book’s title is misleading – people rarely sing in these pages, they simply talk about singing, or playing or composing. It’s tempting to dismiss the book as stuck in another era, when radio show guests were allowed to meander by an overindulgent host.

Terkel Tackles the Inevitable (October 23, 2001)Studs Terkel does not rest easy. Since a childhood beset by ailments, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, oral historian and radio man has feared that if he falls asleep, he’ll never wake up.

Studs Terkel’s Gift of Gab Is Now a Gift for the Ages (July 3, 1997)Unlike most men, Studs Terkel is not merely the sum of his parts. He is also the sum of his tapes.

Nobody knows Americans the way Louis “Studs” Terkel does (March 19, 2000)Since his first book of oral history, “Division Street: America,” in 1967, Terkel has traveled the country, documenting the way people feel about how they live and work. The otherwise “anonymous many” have talked to him about the Great Depression in “Hard Times” (1970), their jobs in “Working” (1974) and old age in “Coming of Age” (1996). His eight oral histories have won him both the Pulitzer Prize (in 1985, for “The Good War: An Oral History of World War II”) and a National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton in 1997.