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

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, moving, insightful first-person narratives
Review: I had always meant to read "Working," but had never gotten around to it. Then I picked up another book loosely based on it ("Gig"), so decided to get the original "Working" as well.

"Working" is moving and brilliant and a million times better than "Gig." Somehow, Terkel lets the people do their own talking, but it's never monotonous, never repetitive, and they always have profound things to say. Reading these people tell their stories is mesmerizing. Terkel steps in just the right amount, organizing the stories into themes (sometimes very creative ones), but never drowning out his interviewees' voices.

Although "Working" came out in 1972, it feels surprisingly recent. The world of work hasn't changed all that much in thirty years. Still relevant, still entertaining, still thought-provoking. And the professions are indexed in the back, so one needn't read them in order.

Rating:
Summary: Moving Oral Narrative
Review: Studs Terkel is a master at getting people to open up, and careful to include several interviewees whose gripes help reinforce his liberal agenda. We hear a stockbroker, trucker, priest, hooker, teller, cops, teachers, autoworkers, and many others discuss their livelihoods. Readers come away appreciating the unique challenges of each job, and the powerlessness that afflicts many employees. These interviews occurred primarily in Chicago during the early 1970's, when the workplace featured fewer women and more jobs in heavy industry. We meet Mike, a steelworker annoyed by his lack of skills who senses that his union job may vanish - as occurred a few years later when US Steel shut their Chicago South Works. Barbara is a young advertising executive forced to deal with a level of office sexism one hopes is now passé. Ex-railroaders Bill and Louis each lament the shriveling of their once-vital industry from separate perches as retiree and washroom attendant. "Working" has many similar, compelling tales. The book may be slightly dated, but it remains a highly informative read.

Rating:
Summary: Very readable contemporary history.
Review: The drugstore owner, the hooker, the ex-stockbroker and steel worker, the nurse, the school teacher, etc., all these people have committed their working life's experience to tape from which Studs Terkel then puts this great book together. And whilst the stories are all fascinating, they do seem to suffer from a kind of homogeneous quality, as if, no matter who the interviewee is, the characters' voices all seem to sound like the same person, only the details determining their sex or experience, adding any differentiation. A minor point, I know, but it tends to veil the individuals beneath a worn down resignedness of whether their experiences were good, bad, or so, so.

I was alerted to this book when reading a Stephen King article about banned books in American colleges, this being one of them, after a school kid used it as the basis for a homework exercise and his mother threw a fit over it. I can't see why myself, but there you are.

Working, is nearly thirty years old now. Nonetheless, its just as relevant today as when Studs Terkel wrote it. And fine reading it is, too.

Rating:
Summary: Follow your Dreams
Review: This is a great book. It shows how real people feel about the job that they perform by interviewing them. Terkel describes his legacy of taped interviews this way: "It's the ordinary people, so called, who have things that they wanted to say all their lives, so this is something of a treasury I'd say." You read about it all, from waiters to teachers, from people who play sports to the people who work in offices. You learn that in order to be happy in life you must follow your dream and not do something based on status or salary. Many times people are being deprived of the potential joys in work when we are trained to focus too much on status and salary. Its better to wake up every morning looking forward to working than living a life full of regrets.

Rating:
Summary: America Speaks
Review: What is America? A funny-shaped badge on a map? Britney Spears, McDonalds, Nike, and the Statue of Liberty? The Declaration of Independence? The New York Yankees?

It's the people that make America America. How well do you know what the average person thinks and feels about work and values and life in general?

Studs Terkel's Working is the closest you can get to seeing the soul of America. In a penetrating series of interviews, you are taken inside the lives of the ordinary American-and you discover how extraordinary each and every life is.

All classes of people from all types of professions (from the washroom attendant to the international executive to the prostitute) and all different personalities are here. And if you don't like it? Tough! It's truth. The interviews are straightforward and candid, often shocking and rarely dull, revealing all the best and worst of human striving. What more do you want?