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About this book
“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.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments and Apologies
- Contents
- Foreword to the 2024 Edition by Mary Schmich
- Foreword to the 2006 Edition by Alex Kotlowitz
- Introduction to the 1993 Edition by Studs Terkel
- Prefatory Notes
- An A-B-C Guide for Non-Chicagoans
- Prologue
- Part I: “The Feeling Tone”
- Part II: On the Town
- Part III: “Did You See Lord Jim?”
- Part IV: Two Landladies, a Cop, and the Stranger
- Part V: Nostos
- Part VI: Homeowner
- Part VII: Homemaker
- Part VIII: Noblesse Oblige
- Part IX: Ex-Domestic
- Part X: Executive Suite
- Part XI: Celebrity
- Part XII: Madison Avenue, Chicago
- Part XIII: Golden Gloves
- Part XIV: Skilled Hands, Old and New
- Part XV: Retired
- Part XVI: “Search for Delight”
- Part XVII: Teacher
- Part XVIII: Making It
- Part XIX: Fallaways
- Part XX: Grass Rooters
- Part XXI: The Inheritors
- Epilogue