Kaitlin Fontana reflects on the death of Studs Terkel and the place of oral history today:
Five years ago, literary icon Louis “Studs” Terkel died in his native, beloved, Chicago. He was 96, four years short of a milestone befitting the expansiveness with which he’d embraced the seldom-heard voices of his country — that is the working, the poor, the normal (in particular, that odd normalcy that is the American Midwest). For Studs Terkel not to make it to 100 seemed cruel, because his voice seems as old as America itself.
Read her full article here.