UNITED STATES AUTHOR · INTERVIEWS · BIOGRAPHY
Studs Terkel
Also known as: Studs terkel, Louis Terkel
Studs Terkel was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue. Terkel credited his knowledge of the world to the tenants who gathered in the lobby of the hotel and the people who congregated in nearby Bughouse Square a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. In 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer. In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street: America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His last oral history book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Late into his life Terkel continued to interview people, work on his books, and make public appearances. He was the first Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society. His last book, P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening was released in November 2008. --From Studsterkel.org
I CALL MARCUS GLENWOOD to the stand.
— from The Great Divide
Most acclaimed
Touch and go
Their love deserved a second chance Karis Buchanan, owner of a health club in London, was a self-sufficient woman who made her own decisions. Seth Mauroy, a business executive in Thailand, was accustomed to taking charge. Small wonder their romance foundered in spite of a strong bond of physical attraction. But months later on a visit to Bangkok, when Karis discovered that her stepfather had been kidnapped, she was willing to accept Seth's help. Together they set out to find Karis's stepfather. On the way she discovered some startling facts about the kidnapping--and about her relationship with Seth.
And They All Sang
2005
A selection of forty previously unpublished interviews with musicians from the past half-century includes the Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian's discussions with such figures as Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Louis Armstrong.
The Good War
Studs Terkel, a master of the interview, talks with a wide variety of people and learns about their opinions and experiences regarding World War Two - how it affected the lives of those who lived or were born during that period of human history.