Terkel spent years researching Hard Times. "The first time I became conscious of it was when our bank closed and I lost everything in it." "Well, I think of the bank failures," Terrell replies quietly. It's one of many interviews archived online by WFMT, the station where Terkel held the job title "Free Spirit" for more than 45 years. "I say to you, the Great American Depression, what's the first thought comes to your mind?" Terkel inquired of Iowa farmer Harry Terrell for Hard Times.
Hard Times was Terkel's second bestseller (preceded by another oral history, Division Street: America) and he'd already begun using a portable tape recorder to capture interviews with everyday people beyond his Chicago studio. But Terkel's stature was national his book The Good War: An Oral History of World War II won a 1985 Pulitzer Prize and his 1974 bestseller Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day And How They Feel About What They Do was adapted into a popular Broadway musical. Before his death in 2008, Terkel brought both working class boosterism and intellectual rigor to his shows, broadcast on local stations for more than half a century.
Hard Times is the perfect introduction to Terkel's work for new readers, as well as a beautiful new addition to any Terkel library.In Chicago, Terkel was a radio legend. Interspersed throughout the text of Hard Times, these breathtaking photographs by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Jack Delano, and others expand the human scope of the voices captured in the book, adding a new dimension to Terkel's incomparable volume. Now, in a handsome new illustrated edition, a selection of Studs's unforgettable interviews are complemented by images from another rich documentary trove of the Depression experience: Farm Security Administration photographs from the Library of Congress. With his trademark grace and compassion, Terkel evokes a mosaic of memories from those who were richest to those who were destitute: politicians, businessmen, artists and writers, racketeers, speakeasy operators, strikers, impoverished farmers, people who were just kids, and those who remember losing a fortune. First published in 1970, Studs Terkel's bestselling Hard Times has been called “a huge anthem in praise of the American spirit” (Saturday Review) and “an invaluable record” (The New York Times).
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