BuzzFlash Reviews

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Published on November 3rd, Three Days After His Death, "P.S." Was Personally Assembled by Terkel. It Includes Samplings of His Storied Work, Mostly Writing Previously Unpublished.

Living in Chicago, Terkel was one of our local treasures. Born in New York, he became a quintissential chronicler of the common person and represented the voices of the heartland.

In Chicago, writers are easily accessible, as were Saul Bellow and Nelson Algren when they were alive and lived here. The same was true for Terkel who rarely turned down a "good cause" event that he was invited to speak at. The raconteur and recorder of the American "voice" was a fixture, in his red checkered shirt, in the Windy City.

If anything, Terkel represented the authenticity of the American experience in his writings. There was nothing contrived or packaged about him, although he knew how to be dramatic when necessary. In fact, he had a local television show in the '50s -- and he was a long-time mainstay on WFMT radio, with his own program.

Terkel never stopped listening to the heartbeat of America.

He will be missed.

This collection, released on November 3rd, is now posthumous, alas.

From the publisher, "The New Press":

The Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian and nonagenarian makes a selection of his favorite unpublished writings, broadcasts, and interviews.

Millions of Studs Terkel fans have come to know the prizewinning oral historian through his landmark books�"The Good War", Hard Times, Working, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, and many others. Few people realize, however, that much of Studs's best work was not collected into these thematic volumes and has, in fact, never been published. P.S. brings together these significant and deeply enjoyable writings for the first time.

The pieces in P.S. reflect Studs's wide-ranging interests and travels, as well as his abiding connection to his hometown, Chicago. Here we have a fascinating conversation with James Baldwin, possibly Studs's finest interview with an author; pieces on the colorful history and culture of Chicago; vivid portraits of Studs's heroes and cohorts (including an insightful and still timely interview with songwriter Yip Harburg, known for his "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime"); and the transcript of Studs's famous broadcast on the Depression, the very moving essence of what was to become Hard Times.

A fitting postscript to a lifetime of listening, P.S. is a truly Terkelesque display of Studs's extraordinary range of talent and the amazing people he found to talk to.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS