So Long to a Great American

The sad news came across the teletype tonight that Studs Terkel had passed away at the age of 96. Terkel was best known for his interviews with ordinary Americans that he turned into best-selling books like Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do and Division Street: America and Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression.

Terkel got his start in the Federal Writers Project after graduating form the University of Chicago Law School in 1934.

You can also buy his interviews Voices of Our Time: Five Decades of Studs Terkel Interviews, but you don't need to because the Chicago Historical Society has an amazing collection of material including his interviews at Studs Terkel: Conversations with America.