hail Studs Terkel, Jazz Age Chicagoan

Living fully to age 96, Terkel was a youth of the '20s Jazz Age and survivor of the '30s Depression who studied law at University of Chicago but who flourished post WWII as a radio actor and program host, then starred as a bar proprietor in a sitcom producing during the early days of tv, 'til his liberal (then radical) views got him blacklisted. In the late '60s, though, at 55 Studs launched a series of as-told-to books profiling diverse yet universally engaged U.S. citizens, respecting the nation's vastly diverse grass roots rather than exploiting its celebrity class or nativist weeds. Like a very select handful of authors, Terkel expressed his lively, communitarian point of view clearly by being invisible in his prose, posing questions but submerging his distinctive personal voice in the narrative history and self-revelations of his fellow citizens. howardmandel.com
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