Studs Terkel

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Louis "Studs" Terkel (born May 16, 1912) is an American author, historian and broadcaster.

Terkel was born in New York City, but at the age of ten, he moved with his family to Chicago, Illinois, where he has spent most of his life. His father, Samuel, was a tailor and his mother, Anna (Finkel) was a seamstress. He had three brothers. From 1926 to 1936, his parents ran a rooming house that was a collecting point for people of all types. Terkel credits 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. In 1939, he married Ida Goldberg and had one son, Paul, named after Paul Robeson.

He attended the University of Chicago, and received a J.D. degree in 1934, but chose not to pursue a career in law. Instead, he joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project, working in radio, doing work ranging from voicing soap opera productions and announcing news and sports, to presenting shows of recorded music and writing radio scripts and advertisements.

Terkel is perhaps best known for his radio program titled "The Studs Terkel Program" that aired on 98.7 WFMT Chicago between 1952 and 1997. The program was a one-hour and appeared each weekday during all of that time. He interviewed guests as diverse as Bob Dylan and Leonard Bernstein.

Terkel published his first book Giants of Jazz in 1956. He followed it with a number of other books, most focusing on the history of the United States people, relying substantially on oral history. He also serves as a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago History Museum.

He appeared in the movie based on the Black Sox Scandal, Eight Men Out. He played newspaper reporter Hugh Fullerton who tries to uncover the White Sox players fixing to throw the 1919 World Series.

Studs Terkel got his nickname because he reminded people of the fictional character Studs Lonigan, of James T. Farrell's trilogy. Terkel has never learned to drive and has long suffered from ommatophobia (fear of eyes).

Studs Terkel is perhaps best known for his 1970 book Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, in which he assembled recollections of the Great Depression from across a wide spectrum of society, from Okies to prison inmates, to the better off. Terkel won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for his similarly formatted book The Good War, which challenged the prevailing notion that World War II was a time of unblemished national solidarity, goodwill, and unified purpose in contrast to the Vietnam War era. In 1997, he was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In August 2005, Terkel underwent successful open-heart surgery. At 93 years old, he was one of the oldest people to undergo this form of surgery and doctors reported his recovery to be remarkable for someone of his advanced age.

On April 4, 2006, Terkel appeared on The Daily Show to a great response in order to promote his newest work, And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey.

On May 22, 2006, Terkel, along with other plaintiffs, filed a suit in federal district court against AT&T to stop them from giving customer phone records to the National Security Agency without a court order.

Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far.

The suit was dismissed by Judge Matthew Kennelly on July 26, 2006. Judge Kennelly cited a "state secrets privilege," designed to protect national security from being harmed by lawsuits.

[edit] Selected works

• Giants of Jazz - 1957
• Division Street: America - 1967
• Hard Times - 1970
• Working - 1974
• The Good War - 1984
• Chicago - 1986
• The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream - 1988
• Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession - 1992
• Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It - 1995
• Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times - 1995
• My American Century - 1997
• The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With Those Who Make Them - 1999
• Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith - 2001
• Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times - 2003
• And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey - 2005
• Working: What People do all Day and How They Feel About What They Do

[edit] External links

• 2005 video of WFMT Critic-at-Large Andrew Patner's interview with Studs Terkel at the University of Chicago
• Studs Terkel's Official Site
• Talk of the Town
• Studs Terkel at the Internet Movie Database
• [rtsp://video.c-span.org/archive/amw/amw_051202.rm?start=00:39:00.0 Studs Terkel on Ayn Rand, copy-paste rtsp-links directly into any realplayer] Insert from 2001 Terkel interview. See [1] for more information about context.
• Direct link to Studs Terkel Video on InDepth of C-SPAN
• 1988 audio interview with Studs Terkel by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
• on black and white
• Studs Terkel - The Last Touch - interviews with Terkel by Alan Hall in 2004 and 2005 - streaming and podcast audio on ABC Radio National

Persondata
NAME	Terkel, Studs
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Terkel, Louis (birth name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American author, historian and broadcaster
DATE OF BIRTH	May 16, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City, New York, United States
DATE OF DEATH	living
PLACE OF DEATH