Division Street America
by Studs Terkel
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
"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. As Tom Wolfe wrote, Studs was "one of those rare thinkers who is actually willing to go out and talk to the incredible people of this country."
Most interviewees shared the hope for a good life for their children and the wish for a less divided and more just America, but the real Chicago street referenced in the title takes on a metaphorical meaning as a symbol of the acute social divides of the 1960s--and highlights the continued relevance of Terkel's work in our polarized times.
Now, over fifty years later, Melissa Harris and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mary Schmich have created the remarkable Division Street Revisited podcast, coming in January 2025, in which they have found and interviewed descendants of Terkel's original subjects in seven rich episodes. Schmich's foreword to the reissue and the extraordinary podcast--along with the new edition of Division Street--together demonstrate Studs Terkel's prescience and the enduring importance of his work.
HistoryAmericasUnited StatesHistorical Study & Educational ResourcesPolitics & Social SciencesAnthropology
RELEASED2024
PUBLISHERNew Press
LENGTH416
LANGUAGEEN
Studs Terkel was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue. Terkel credited 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 a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. In 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer. In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street: America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His last oral history book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Late into his life Terkel continued to interview people, work on his books, and make public appearances. He was the first Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society. His last book, P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening was released in November 2008. --From Studsterkel.org
Division Street America
by Studs Terkel
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
"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. As Tom Wolfe wrote, Studs was "one of those rare thinkers who is actually willing to go out and talk to the incredible people of this country."
Most interviewees shared the hope for a good life for their children and the wish for a less divided and more just America, but the real Chicago street referenced in the title takes on a metaphorical meaning as a symbol of the acute social divides of the 1960s--and highlights the continued relevance of Terkel's work in our polarized times.
Now, over fifty years later, Melissa Harris and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mary Schmich have created the remarkable Division Street Revisited podcast, coming in January 2025, in which they have found and interviewed descendants of Terkel's original subjects in seven rich episodes. Schmich's foreword to the reissue and the extraordinary podcast--along with the new edition of Division Street--together demonstrate Studs Terkel's prescience and the enduring importance of his work.
HistoryAmericasUnited StatesHistorical Study & Educational ResourcesPolitics & Social SciencesAnthropologyCulturalSociology
RELEASED2024
PUBLISHERNew Press
LENGTH416
LANGUAGEEN
Studs Terkel was born Louis Terkel in New York on May 16, 1912. The family moved to Chicago in 1922 and opened a rooming house. From 1926 to 1936 they ran another rooming house, the Wells-Grand Hotel at Wells Street and Grand Avenue. Terkel credited 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 a meeting place for workers, labor organizers, dissidents, the unemployed, and religious fanatics of many persuasions. Terkel attended University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934. After a brief stint with the civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio shows and ads. In 1944, he landed his own show on WENR. This was called the Wax Museum show that allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked from folk music, opera, jazz, or blues. A year later he had his own television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of questions that marked his later work as an interviewer. In 1952 Terkel began working for WFMT, first with the "Studs Terkel Almanac" and the "Studs Terkel Show," primarily to play music. The interviewing came along by accident. This later became the award-winning, "The Studs Terkel Program." His first book, Giants of Jazz, was published in 1956. Ten years later his first book of oral history interviews, Division Street: America, came out. It was followed by a succession of oral history books on the 1930s Depression, World War Two, race relations, working, the American dream, and aging. His last oral history book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, was published in 2001. Late into his life Terkel continued to interview people, work on his books, and make public appearances. He was the first Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Chicago Historical Society. His last book, P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening was released in November 2008. --From Studsterkel.org
