Coming of Age: Growing Up in the Twentieth Century

Author Bio: Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel (1912—2008) won the Pulitzer prize in 1985 for his interviews with ordinary people in such books as American Dreams: Lost and Found; Working; Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression; and Division Street: America Giants of Jazz. Often called an oral historian, he preferred to be known for playing music on the radio. Nevertheless, he received lifetime achievement awards from the National Book Critics Circle in 2004 and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2006, and he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was awarded a Presidential National Humanities Medal. He grew up in Chicago and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932 and from the University of Chicago Law School in 1934. He was an actor in radio soap operas, a disk jockey, a radio commentator, and a television emcee, and he traveled all over the world doing on-the-spot interviews. He also hosted a daily radio program on WFMT in Chicago that was syndicated throughout the country.