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

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do | Studs Terkel | Great Book

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Working: People Ta...

	Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do Studs Terkel New Press, 1997 - 640 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fascinating look at what we do with the bulk of our time

Working profiles the working lives of scores of Americans. From prostitute to chief executive, coal mine worker to major league ballplayer- a myriad of professions are covered. The book reads like a documentary (which it is). Terkel has included the most interesting aspects of each case study's working life, and ultimately you see why each continues to pursue their career in that chosen field- or at least what satisfaction they get from showing up everyday. It's a great book to pick up and spend 5 to 10 minutes or so reading about how someone else's working life has parallels to your own. The interviews were conducted mostly during the late 60's and early 70's but while it is slightly dated, even that fact makes for an interesting historical perspective.

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Great Book

I read this book 30 years ago. It has probably kept me unemployed for most of that time. Warning if you read this book you may quit your job.

Very readable contemporary history.

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.

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So good that I started a website based on it

I read this book a few years ago and found it so interesting that I decided to start a website (www.aboutmyjob.com) based on the book. It isn't a fast read, but has bite sized stories which one can read on the train. Oral histories always read well and this is no exception.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5

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