Studs Terkel Studs Terkel is the author of ten books of oral history, including Working and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Good War." He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters, and a recipient of a Presidential National Humanities Medal, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters, and a George Polk Career Award. At the age of 89, Studs Terkel has turned to the ultimate human experience, that of death and the possibility of life afterward. Born in 1912, Studs grew up in Chicago. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932 and from the Chicago Law School in 1934. He has acted in radio soap operas, has been a disc jockey, sports commentator and TV emcee. He hosted an exceedingly popular daily interview program on WFMT radio for forty years. (Excerpt below is from the introduction to Will the Circle Be Unbroken?) "All of the doctors I have come to know and respect, including my cardiologist, my surgeon, and my internist,* have urged me to undertake this project. We, as a matter of course, reflect on death, voice hope and fear, only when a dear one is near death, or out of it. Why not speak of it while we’re in the flower of good health? *Quentin Young has been our family doctor for the last forty years. I’m certain that his ebullience, his spirit of bonhomie, and his skills have been key factors in my living far beyond my traditionally allotted span."