Studs Terkel's Chicago - (Hardcover)

About the Book

One man's impressions of his home city, Chicago, and its unique personality. Features major sights and discusses living conditions, transport, ethnic cultures and blues music.

Book Synopsis

In a blend of history, memoir, and photography, the Pulitzer Prize winner paints a vivid portrait of this extraordinary American city.

Chicago was home to the country's first skyscraper (a ten-story building built in 1884), and marks the start of the famed Route 66. It is also the birthplace of the remote control (Zenith) and the car radio (Motorola), and the first major American city to elect a woman (Jane Byrne) and then an African American man (Harold Washington) as mayor.

Its literary and journalistic history is just as dazzling, and includes Nelson Algren, Mike Royko, and Sara Paretsky. From Al Capone to the street riots during the Democratic National Convention in 1968, Chicago, in the words of Studs Terkel, "has-as they used to whisper of the town's fast woman-a reputation."

Chicago was also home to Terkel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian, who moved to Chicago in 1922 as an eight-year-old and who would make it his home until his death in 2008 at the age of ninety-six. This book is a splendid evocation of Studs Terkel's hometown in all its glory-and all its imperfection.

About the Author

Studs Terkel (1912-2008) was the bestselling author of twelve books of oral history, including Working; Hard Times; the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Good War"; and, most recently, his memoir Touch and Go (all available from The New Press). He was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Presidential National Humanities Medal and the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.