Studs Terkel: A Life in Words

It is certainly appropriate that someone got to Studs Terkel, the author of the bestselling classics Working and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Good War, and did a Terkel-esque interview with the writer before his voice is lost to posterity. Tony Parker is an experienced compiler of oral history and has known Terkel since they first interviewed each other 10 years ago. Parker garnered the text of his book by recording 20 hours of interviews with Terkel, along with conversations with Terkel's wife and his sons, his colleagues at Chicago's WFMT-FM, and illustrious friends such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Calvin Trillin. Additional material comes from more than a dozen of Terkel's best interviews, as well as one that didn't go so well.