Browse All Work by DLPP Recipients and Runners-Up

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P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening

Studs Terkel
2008

The pieces in P.S. reflect Studs’s wide-ranging interests and travels, as well as his abiding connection to his hometown, Chicago. Here we have a fascinating conversation with James Baldwin, possibly Studs’s finest interview with an author; pieces on the colorful history and culture of Chicago; vivid portraits of Studs’s heroes and cohorts (including an insightful and still timely interview with songwriter Yip Harburg, known for his “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”); and the transcript of Studs’s famous broadcast on the Depression, the very moving essence of what was to become Hard Times.
The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century

Studs Terkel
2007

The Studs Terkel Reader, originally published under the title My American Century, collects the best interviews from eight of Terkel's classic oral histories together with his magnificent introductions to each work. Featuring selections fromAmerican Dreams, Coming of Age, Division Street, "The Good War", The Great Divide, Hard Times, Race, and Working, this "greatest hits" volume is a treasury of Terkel's most memorable subjects that will delight his many lifelong fans and provide a perfect introduction for those who have not yet experienced the joy of reading Studs Terkel.
Touch and Go: A Memoir

Studs Terkel
2007

At nearly 95, Studs Terkel has written about everyone's life, it seems, but his own. Here he offers a memoir which--embodying the spirit of the man himself--is youthful and vivacious. Terkel begins by taking us back to his childhood, describing the hectic life of a family trying to earn a living in Chicago. He then goes on to his experiences--as a poll watcher charged with stealing votes for the Democratic machine, as a young theatergoer, and eventually as an actor himself in both radio and on the stage--giving us a portrait of the Chicago of the 1920s and 1930s. He tells of his beginnings as a disc jockey after World War II and as an interviewer and oral historian--a craft he would come to perfect. Finally, he discusses his involvement with progressive politics, leading to his travails during the McCarthy period when he was blacklisted.
And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey

Studs Terkel
2005

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Studs Terkel hosted a legendary daily radio show in Chicago, presenting listeners with his inimitable take on an eclectic range of music, from classical, opera, and jazz to gospel, blues, folk, and rock. And They All Sang features more than forty of Terkel's unforgettable conversations with some of the greatest musicians of the past century—including Louis Armstrong, Leonard Bernstein, Big Bill Broonzy, Bob Dylan, Dizzy Gillespie, Mahalia Jackson, Janis Joplin, Rosa Raisa, Pete Seeger, and many others.
Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times

Studs Terkel
2003

These interviews--with congressmen and cooks, union organizers and CEOs, students, immigrants, activists, veterans, priests and lawyers--constitute an alternative history of the American century. They form a legacy of the indefatigable spirit that Studs has always embodied, an inheritance for those who, by taking a stand, are making concrete the dreams of today.
Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith

Studs Terkel
2001

From a Hiroshima survivor to an AIDS caseworker, from a death row parolee to a woman who emerged from a two-year coma, these interviewees find an eloquence and grace in dealing with a topic many of us have yet to discuss openly and freely.
The Studs Terkel Interviews: Film and Theater

Studs Terkel
1999

Among the many highlights in these pages, Buster Keaton explains the wonders of unscripted silent comedy, Federico Fellini reflects on honesty in art, Carol Channing reveals that she is far more serious than she lets on, and Marlon Brando turns the tables and wants to interview Terkel. We learn about crucial artistic decisions in the lives of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee and hear from a range of film directors, from Vittorio De Sica and King Vidor to Satyajit Ray. We even get to witness Terkel playing straight man to a wildly inventive Zero Mostel. Because Terkel knows his subjects' work intimately, he asks precisely the right questions to elicit the most revealing responses.
Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by those Who've Lived It

Studs Terkel
1995

Youth, so goes the cliche, is wasted on the young; likewise, it could be said that old age today is wasted on a younger generation with no sense of the past and willfully ignorant of a wisdom accumulated by years of experience. In his latest oral history, 83-year-old Terkel asks grumpily, "With our past become so irrelevant..., is it any wonder that the young feel so disdainful of their elders?" To reclaim our lost sense of history and to renew respect for our elders, Terkel interviewed 69 individuals who have come of age in the latter part of the 20th century. The youngest is 70, the oldest, 99. Some are well known (artist Jacob Lawrence, actress Uta Hagen, economist John Kenneth Galbraith); others live out of the limelight (a farm workers' organizer, a retired bank president, a librarian). But they all cling to life tenaciously and courageously, acting as "living repositories of our past, our history.
Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession

Studs Terkel
1992

In a rare and revealing look how at how people in America truly feel about race, Terkel brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till's mother are among those whose voices appear in Race. In all, nearly one hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: feelings about affirmative action, gentrification, secret prejudices, and dashed hopes.
The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream

Studs Terkel
1988

Studs Terkel interviews three college teachers, four farmers, a high school teacher, neighborhood organizer, stock broker, advertising executive, businesswomen, real estate broker, dentist, doctor, blue collar worker, professional strikebreaker, columnist, unemployed steelworker, lawyer, flight attendant, bartender, CPA, woman engineer, socialite, Congressman, nuclear physicist, author, waitress, KKK member, storyteller, gay activist, sanctuary worker, Christian fundamentalist, Tony Bouza, Erica Bouza, Maggie Kuhn, Victor Reuther, and peace activists Jean and Joe Gump.
The Good War: An Oral History of World War II

Studs Terkel
1984

A writer, reporter, and above all, a good listener, Studs Terkel has spent a career posing provocative questions and actively listening to the answers. In "The Good War", Terkel talks to Americans, both famous and obscure, about their contrasting, not always golden, memories of the war that shaped their lives, World War II.
American Dreams: Lost and Found

Studs Terkel
1980

Presents 100 interviews with a cross section of American people, both famous and non-famous, who discuss their personal lives and ambitions.
Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times

Studs Terkel
1977

In Talking to Myself, Pulitzer Prizing-winning author Studs Terkel offers us an autobiography for our times--the stirring story of a man whose life has been so vivid that its telling mirrors the events of our century. From Mahalia Jackson to Bertrand Russell, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Frederico Fellini, Studs has met them all and captured their voices for us.
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

Studs Terkel
1974

Studs Terkel records the voices of America. Men and women from every walk of life talk to him, telling him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and happinesses on the job.
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

Studs Terkel
1970

A re-creation of the America of the thirties, based on the reminiscences of a cross-section of people representing all walks of life, including several notable personalities.
Division Street: America

Studs Terkel
1967

Viewing the inhabitants of a single city, Chicago, as a microcosm of the nation at large, Division Street chronicles the thoughts and feelings of some seventy people from widely varying backgrounds in terms of class, race, and personal history. From a mother and son who migrated from Appalachia to a Native American boilerman, from a streetwise ex–gang leader to a liberal police officer, from the poorest African Americans to the richest socialites, these unique and often intimate first-person accounts form a multifaceted collage that defies any simple stereotype of America.
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce

Colm Toibin
2018

Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
The Magician

Colm Tóibín
9-7-2021

The Magician opens at the turn of the twentieth century in a provincial German city where the young boy, Thomas Mann, grows up with a conservative, conventional father and a Brazilian mother, exotic and unpredictable, who will never fit in. He hides both his artistic aspirations and his homosexual desires from this father, and his sexuality from everyone. He longs for the charismatic, beautiful, rich, cultured young Jewish man, but marries his twin sister. He longs for a boy he sees on a beach in Venice and writes a novel about him. He has six children. He is the most successful novelist of his time. He wins the Nobel Prize and is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler. His oldest daughter and son share lovers. They are leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement. This stunning combination of German propriety and Bohemian revolution goes hand in hand for decades. We see the rise of Hitler, the forced exile of a swath of German writers and artists, Mann's narrow escape to America, his sojourn at Princeton, along with fellow exile Einstein, and his final move to LA in the late 40s where he presided over an astonishing community of writers, artists and musicians, including Brecht and Shoenberg, even as his children court tragedy. To call this a portrait of an artist is both reductive and true-it is a novel about a character and a family, fiercely engaged by the world, profoundly flawed, and as flamboyant as it's possible to be.
House of Names: A Novel

Colm Tóibín
2017

A retelling of the story of Clytemnestra and her children in the legendary Greek city of Mycenae, describes how at the side of her lover she plots to murder her long-absent husband for his betrayals and infidelities. By the award-winning author of The Master.
The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction

Colm Tóibín
2016

A compilation of the best in Irish short fiction includes excerpts from Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," James Joyce's "The Dead," and works by Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Emma Donoghue, Bram Stoker, and other notable authors.
Nora Webster: A Novel

Colm Tóibín
2015

"From one of contemporary literature's bestselling, critically acclaimed and beloved authors, a magnificent new novel set in Ireland, about a fiercely compelling young widow and mother of four, navigating grief and fear, struggling for hope. Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín's superb seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be drawn back into it. Wounded, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning empathy and kindness, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven--herself. Nora Webster is a masterpiece in character study by a writer at the zenith of his career, "beautiful and daring" (The New York Times Book Review) and able to "sneak up on readers and capture their imaginations" (USA TODAY). In Nora Webster, Tóibín has created a character as iconic, engaging and memorable as Madame Bovary or Hedda Gabler"-- Provided by publisher
On Elizabeth Bishop

Colm Tóibín
2015

"In this book, novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences--the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own. What emerges is a compelling double portrait that will intrigue readers interested in both Bishop and Tóibín."--Jacket
New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and their Families

Colm Tóibín
2012

In his essay on Tennessee Williams, the author reveals an artist profoundly tormented by his sister's mental illness. Through the relationship between W.B. Yeats and his father, he examines a world of family relations, and in Roddy Doyle's writing on his parents illuminates an Ireland reinvented. From John Cheever's journals he makes fresh this darkly comic misanthrope and his intimates. Educating an intellectual woman, Cheever remarked, is like letting a rattlesnake into the house. In pieces that range from the importance of aunts (and the death of parents) in the English nineteenth-century novel to the relationship between fathers and sons in the writing of James Baldwin and Barack Obama, the author illuminates the intimate connections between writers and their families, but also articulates the great joy of reading their work.
The Testament of Mary

Colm Tóibín
2012

A provocative imagining of the later years of the mother of Jesus finds her living a solitary existence in Ephesus years after her son's crucifixion and struggling with guilt, anger, and feelings that her son is not the son of God and that His sacrifice was not for a worthy cause.
A Guest at the Feast

Colm Tóibín
2011

Colm Tóibín's touching memoir, A Guest at the Feast, beautifully read by the author himself. A Guest at the Feast moves from the small town of Enniscorthy to Dublin, from memories of a mother who always had a book on the go to the author's early adulthood, from a love of literature to the influences of place and family. Tóibín's captivating memoir is the story of a writer coming of age and his connections between home, work and love. It is a perfect gem of a book.