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 gravediggers 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.

A beautiful paperback edition of Terkel's greatest hits. For this volume, Studs himself selected the best interviews from eight of his classic books: American Dreams, Coming of Age, Division Street, The Good War, The Great Divide, Hard Times, Race and Working - together with his original introductions to each book. Published in the year of teh great man's 95th birthday, it's a keeper from the United States' foremost oral historian and the bestselling author of 12 legendary books of oral history.

A beautifully illustrated edition of Studs Terkel's timeless portraits of America's jazz legends, for readers of all ages.
Studs Terkel's first book, "Giants of Jazz," is the master interviewer's unique tribute to America's jazz greats, now available in an affordable paperback edition with the original illustrations and discography.
The thirteen profiles in this "luminous" ("Jazzwise") collection weave together stories of the individual jazz musicians' lives with the history of the jazz era, and the music's evolution from the speakeasies of New York to the concert halls of the world's greatest cities. Terkel--a lifelong fan and friend of many of these legends--uses firsthand interviews with artists such as Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker to tell the human stories behind the giants who shaped this uniquely American music form. Some of the many fascinating details Terkel relates include Joe Oliver's favorite meal, Fats Waller's 1932 rendezvous in Paris with eminent organist Marcel Dupre, Dizzy Gillespie's childhood trip to a pawnshop to buy his first horn, and the origin of Billie Holiday's nickname. Paperback with French flaps, thirteen b/w illustrations.

On October 28, 1959, John Howard Griffin underwent a transformation that changed many lives beyond his own--he made his skin black and traveled through the segregated Deep South. His odyssey of discovery was captured in journal entries, arguably the single most important documentation of 20th-century American racism ever written. More than 50 years later, this newly edited edition--which is based on the original manuscript and includes a new design and added afterword--gives fresh life to what is still considered a "contemporary book." The story that earned respect from civil rights leaders and death threats from many others endures today as one of the great human--and humanitarian--documents of the era. In this new century, when terrorism is too often defined in terms of a single ethnic designation or religion, and the first black president of the United States is subject to hateful slurs, this record serves as a reminder that America has been blinded by fear and racial intolerance before. This is the story of a man who opened his eyes and helped an entire nation to do likewise.

At nearly 95, Studs Terkel has written about everyone's life, it seems, but his own. He now offers a memoir which - embodying the spirit of the man himself - is youthful, vivacious and enormous fun. Fans of Terkel will be captivated by the unique and eclectic life of one of America's greatest living legends.

Capturing the Depression in all its complexity, this work assembles a mosaic of memories as told by those who faced destitution, as well as those who stayed rich. The book includes information that illustrates the Depression's effect on those who lived through it, and shows how bitter memories can be transformed into a surprising nostalgia.

Mike Royko wrote a daily column for nearly 35 years - at first for the "Chicago Daily News", then the "Sun-Times", and finally the "Tribune" - and his Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary was syndicated in more than 600 newspapers nationwide. Pretension and hypocrisy were his targets, and his well-aimed salvos, delivered with blunt honesty and penetrating wit, w on him fans and foes alike. This text collects the best of Royko's columns from his career. Culled from 7500 columns and spanning four decades, from his early days to his last dispatch, the writings in this collection reflect a radically changing America as seen by a man whose sense of justice and humour never faltered. Included in this volume are columns such as: the stories of his childhood as recollected by himself and his pal, "Slats" Grobnik; his modern-day Christmas parable of Mary and Joseph looking for a room in Chicago; "A Faceless Man's Plea," the tale of woe that in one day had Richard Nixon publicly reversing the Veterans Administration; his account of Frank Sinatra's threat to punch him in the eye; the column he wrote about how his feet had always disappointed him; his pieces on racism; and his amusing attacks on political correctness. Putting each decade into perspective are introductions by Lois Wille, Royko's friend and colleague at all three Chicago dailies.

A patriot and a political radical, Woody Guthrie captured the spirit of his times in his enduring songs. He was marked by the FBI as a subversive. He lived in fear of the fatal fires that stalked his family and of the mental illness that snared his mother. At forty-two, he was cruelly silenced by Huntington's disease. Ed Cray, the first biographer to be granted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive, has created a haunting portrait of an American who profoundly influenced Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American popular music itself.

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. The book is a mosaic of memories from those who were richest to those who were most destitute: politicians like James Farley and Raymond Moley; businessmen like Bill Benton and Clement Stone; a six-day bicycle racer; artists and writers; racketeers; speakeasy operators, strikers, and impoverished farmers; people who were just kids; and those who remember losing a fortune. Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information--much of it little known--but also a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, showing how the Depression affected the lives of those who experienced it firsthand, often transforming the most bitter memories into a surprising nostalgia.

"Inspired...the language spoken here is pure Terkel."--"The New York Times Book Review"
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 late John Beecher, though descended from the abolitionist Beechers, grew up in Birmingham, where his father was a steel industry executive. Beecher himself was groomed for a similar role, but when he went into the mills as a young man during the Great Depression, he rebelled and began to write powerful, radical, activist poetry. A contemporary of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck, he became a similar chronicler of the massive human displacement of the economic upheaval of the 1930s. During World War II, he served as an officer of the interracial crew of the troop transport Booker T. Washington, and wrote a book about those experiences. In the McCarthy era, he was blacklisted. And in the civil rights era, he turned his attention to the evils of segregation and the Ku Klux Klan. Always, he wrote powerful, spare verse which in lesser hands might have been ruined by its outrage. With his artist wife, Barbara, he published several elegant collections of his poetry on his own hand-set letterpress. His books included Report to the Stockholders, To Live and Die in Dixie, In Egypt Land, and a 1974 Macmillan edition of collected poems. All are out of print.

In this unique look at one of our most pervasive national myths, Studs Terkel persuades an extraordinary range of Americans to articulate their version of "The American Dream." Beginning with an embittered winner of the Miss U.S.A. contest who sees the con behind the dream of success and including an early interview with a highly ambitious Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terkel explores the diverse landscape of the promise of the United States—from farm kids dreaming of the city to city kids determined to get out, from the Boston Brahmin to the KKK member, from newly arrived immigrants to families who have lived in this country for generations, these narratives include figures both famous and infamous. Filtered through the lens of our leading oral historian, the chorus of voices in American Dreams highlights the hopes and struggles of coming to and living in the United States. Originally published in 1980, this is a classic work of oral history that provides an extraordinary and moving picture of everyday American lives.

Some beg for forgiveness. Others claim innocence. At least three cheer for their favorite football teams.

Death waits for us all, but only those sentenced to death know the day and the hour--and only they can be sure that their last words will be recorded for posterity. "Last Words of the Executed" presents an oral history of American capital punishment, as heard from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney.

The product of seven years of extensive research by journalist Robert K. Elder, the book explores the cultural value of these final statements and asks what we can learn from them. We hear from both the famous--such as Nathan Hale, Joe Hill, Ted Bundy, and John Brown--and the forgotten, and their words give us unprecedented glimpses into their lives, their crimes, and the world they inhabited. Organized by era and method of execution, these final statements range from heartfelt to horrific. Some are calls for peace or cries against injustice; others are accepting, confessional, or consoling; still others are venomous, rage-fueled diatribes. Even the chills evoked by some of these last words are brought on in part by the shared humanity we can't ignore, their reminder that we all come to the same end, regardless of how we arrive there."

Last Words of the Executed" is not a political book. Rather, Elder simply asks readers to listen closely to these voices that echo history. The result is a riveting, moving testament from the darkest corners of society.

The Pulitzer Prizing-winning author Studs Terkel is layed bare in an autobiography of modern times - the stirring story of a man whose life has been so vivid that its telling mirrors the events of a century. From Mahalia Jackson to Bertrand Russell, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Frederico Fellini, Studs has met them all and captured their voices for us. With the addition of a marvelous new postscript, Talking to Myself is as enjoyable now as when it was first published--a work that is as unusual as it is compelling.

"Once you've become a part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real."
Ernest Hemingway once said of Nelson Algren's writing that "you should not read it if you cannot take a punch." The prose poem, "Chicago: City on the Make," filled with language that swings and jabs and stuns, lives up to those words. In this sixtieth anniversary edition, Algren presents 120 years of Chicago history through the lens of its "nobodies nobody knows" the tramps, hustlers, aging bar fighters, freed death-row inmates, and anonymous working stiffs who prowl its streets.
Upon its original publication in 1951, Algren's "Chicago: City on the Make" was scorned by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce and local journalists for its gritty portrayal of the city and its people, one that boldly defied City Hall's business and tourism initiatives. Yet the book captures the essential dilemma of Chicago: the dynamic tension between the city's breathtaking beauty and its utter brutality, its boundless human energy and its stifling greed and violence.
The sixtieth anniversary edition features historic Chicago photos and annotations on everything from defunct slang to Chicagoans, famous and obscure, to what the Black Sox scandal was and why it mattered. More accessible than ever, this is, as Studs Terkel says, "the best book about Chicago."

For two years before the April 2001 sit-in at Harvard on behalf of the blue-collar workers, Greg Halpern had been photographing them and recording their thoughts about their lives and work. The institution that didn't pay "living wages" while collecting 5 million a day in interest on its endowmenthad actually lowered the workers' pay in the months leading up to the confrontation. The personal accounts presented here are poignant and illuminating reminders of the wide disparity of circumstances that exist in this land of plenty. The photographs are stunning. 65 duotone photographs.