Word: terkel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Gwaltney, following the lead of interviewers like Studs Terkel, lets dozens of average people talk into his tape recorder. He didn't seek out activists or politicians; he seemed, instead, to meet many of the sort of people respected for living quiet, aboveboard lives; the they hate, so much and with so much fire, is what makes this book so scary...
Grim tribes of sociologists have reported back from office and factory that most workers find their labor mechanical, boring, imprisoning, stultifying, repetitive, dreary, heartbreaking. In his 1972 book Working, Studs Terkel began: "This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence-to the spirit as well as to the body." The historical horrors of industrialization (child labor, Dickensian squalor, the dark satanic mills) translate into the 20th century's robotic busywork on the line, tightening the same damned screw on the Camaro's firewall assembly, going nuts to the banging, jangling Chaplinesque whirr of modern...
ALTHOUGH IT APPEALS to the populist in us all, oral history is basically a lazy man's version of the real thing. It is raw material, not finished product. Studs Terkel, who popularized the discipline, combines a sharp editing style and evocative introductions of his speakers to create a picture larger than the transcripts would offer by themselves. Most importantly, however, Terkel picks the right people, the biggest responsibility of the Oral historian...
NONFICTION: American Dreams, Studs Terkel -Faces in My Time, Anthony Powell -Gjon Mili: Photographs & Recollections -The Hour of Our Death, Philippe Aries -Paper Money, Adam Smith -The Terrible Secret, Walter Laqueur -Walt Whitman, Justin Kaplan
NONFICTION: Ambition, Joseph Epstein American Dreams, Studs Terkel Gjon Mili: Photographs & Recollections ∙ The Terrible Secret, Walter Laqueur ∙ Paper Money, Adam Smith ∙ Walt Whitman, Justin Kaplan ∙ Ways of Escape, Graham Greene