Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award

Follow

• 

  Doing Sixty and Seventy

  Gloria Steinem

  Gloria Steinem has been an eloquent and outspoken voice for women’s rights and equality for more than four decades. In Doing Sixty & Seventy she addresses an essential concern of people everywhere—and especially of women: the issue of aging. Whereas turning fifty, in her experience, is “leaving a much-loved and familiar country,” turning sixty means “arriving at the border of a new one.” With insight, intelligence, wit, and heartfelt honesty, she explores the landscapes of this new country and celebrates what she has called “the greatest adventure of our lives.” While appreciating everybody’s experiences as different, Steinem sees these years as charged with possibilities. Dealing with stereotypes and the “invisibility” that often accompany a woman’s senior years can be as liberating as it is frustrating. It frees women as well as men to embrace that “full, glorious, alive-in-the-moment, don’t-give-a-damn yet caring-for-everything sense of the right now.”

• 

  Marilyn: Norma Jeane

  Gloria Steinem

  The book delves into a topic many other writers have ignored—that of Norma Jeane, the young girl who grew up with an unstable mother, constant shuffling between foster homes, and abuse. Steinem evocatively recreates that world, connecting it to the fragile adult persona of Marilyn Monroe. Her compelling text draws on a long, private interview Monroe gave to photographer George Barris, part of an intended joint project begun during Monroe’s last summer. Steinem’s Marilyn also includes Barris’s extraordinary portraits of Monroe, taken just weeks before the star’s death.

• 

  Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender

  Gloria Steinem

  The six pieces, three of which have never been published before, explode common assumptions and propose radical new ways of looking at human possibilities.

• 

  My Life on the Road

  Gloria Steinem

  Gloria Steinem had an itinerant childhood. When she was a young girl, her father would pack the family in the car every fall and drive across country searching for adventure and trying to make a living. The seeds were planted: Gloria realized that growing up didn’t have to mean settling down. And so began a lifetime of travel, of activism and leadership, of listening to people whose voices and ideas would inspire change and revolution.

• 

  Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

  Gloria Steinem

  These essays from Gloria Steinem’s first three decades of work offer a portrait of a woman who was not only one of the savviest leaders of the women’s liberation movement, but also a profoundly humane thinker with a wide-ranging intellect and irresistible wit. In “If Men Could Menstruate,” Steinem engages readers in a flight of imagination as incisive as it is hilarious. She offers first-person journalism in her underground exposé “I Was a Playboy Bunny,” provides heartbreaking memoir in the story of her mother’s struggles in “Ruth’s Song,” and stakes important positions in feminist theory in “Erotica vs. Pornography.” This is Steinem at her most provocative—and most compassionate.

• 

  Revolution from Within: A Book of Self Esteem

  Gloria Steinem

  The author investigates the most vital component of a healthy personality--self-esteem--drawing on her own experience with low self-esteem and that of such luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi.

• 

  The Beach Book

  Gloria Steinem

  Gloria Steinem's 1963 book celebrating beach culture dedicated "To Ocean Beach Pier that was and to Paradise Island".

• 

  The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off!: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Rebellion

  Gloria Steinem

  For decades -- and especially now in these times of crisis -- people around the world have found guidance, humor, and unity in Gloria Steinem's gift for creating quotes that inspire action and create hope. From her early days as a journalist and feminist activist, up to today, Steinem's words have helped generations to empower themselves and work together. Gloria sees quotes as 'the poetry of everyday life,' so she also has included a few favorites from friends, including bell hooks, Flo Kennedy, Michelle Obama, and more, in this anthology of quotes that will make you want to laugh, march, and create some of your own. At the end of the book, there is a special space for each reader to add their own quotes and others they've found. Covering topics from relationships ('Many are looking for the right person. Too few are looking to be the right person.') to patriarchy ('Men are liked better when they win. Women are liked better when they lose. This is how patriarchy is enforced every day.') and activism ('Change, like a tree, grows from the bottom up.'), plus an introduction and essays by Steinem, this is the definitive collection of her words on many of the topics that matter most today. The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! is both timeless and timely. It is a gift of hope from Gloria to readers, that they will want to share with friends.

• 

  American Dreams: Lost and Found

  Studs Terkel

  Presents 100 interviews with a cross section of American people, both famous and non-famous, who discuss their personal lives and ambitions.

• 

  And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by those Who've Lived It

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  Division Street: America

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

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

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  Studs Terkel's Chicago

  Studs Terkel

  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), 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 Terkel himself, “has—as they used to whisper of the town’s fast woman—a reputation.”
  
  Chicago was of course also home to the Pulitzer Prize–winning oral historian Studs Terkel, 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 96. This book is a splendid evocation of Studs’ hometown in all its glory—and all its imperfection.

• 

  Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  The Good War: An Oral History of World War II

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream

  Studs Terkel

  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 Studs Terkel Interviews: Film and Theater

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century

  Studs Terkel

  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

  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.

• 

  Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith

  Studs Terkel

  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.

• 

  Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

  Studs Terkel

  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.