About this item
A landmark reissue of Studs Terkel's classic microcosm of America, with a new foreword by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-creator of the Division Street Revisited podcast"Remarkable. . . . Division Street astonishes, dismays, exhilarates." - The New York Times. When New Press founder André Schiffrin first published Division Street in 1967, Studs Terkel's reputation as America's foremost oral historian was established overnight.Approaching Chicagoans as emblematic of the nation at large, Terkel set out with his tape recorder and spent a year talking to over seventy people about race, family, education, work, prospects for the future - all topics that remain deeply contentious today. Subjects included a Black woman who attended the 1963 March on Washington, a tool-and-die maker, a baker from Budapest, a closeted gay actor, and a successful but cynical ad man.
About the Author
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for "The Good War", and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago. Terkel was acclaimed for his efforts to preserve American oral history. His 1985 book "The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two", which detailed ordinary peoples' accounts of the country's involvement in World War II, won the Pulitzer Prize. For "Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression", Terkel assembled recollections of the Great Depression that spanned the socioeconomic spectrum, from Okies, through prison inmates, to the wealthy. His 1974 book, "Working" also was highly acclaimed. In 1995, he received the Chicago History Museum "Making History Award" for Distinction in Journalism and Communications. In 1997, Terkel was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Two years later, he received the George Polk Career Award in 1999.
