This “electrifying” collection of unpublished work demonstrates the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “great gift for tapping into the lifeblood of America” ( Booklist ) .   Millions of Studs Terkel fans have come to know the prize-winning oral historian through his landmark books―“ The Good War ”, Hard Times , Working , Will the Circle Be Unbroken? , and many others. Few people realize, however, that much of Studs’s best work was not collected into these thematic volumes and has, in fact, never been published. P.S. brings together these significant and fascinating writings for the first time.   The pieces in P.S. reflect Terkel’s wide-ranging interests and travels, as well as his abiding connection to his hometown, Chicago. Here we have a fascinating conversation with James Baldwin, possibly Terkel’s finest interview with an author; pieces on the colorful history and culture of Chicago; vivid portraits of Terkel’s heroes and cohorts (including an insightful and still timely interview with songwriter Yip Harburg, known for his “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime”); and the transcript of Terkel’s famous broadcast on the Depression, the moving chronicle that would later develop into Hard Times .   A fitting postscript to a lifetime of listening, P.S. is a truly Terkelesque display of the author’s extraordinary range of talent and the amazing people he spoke to. Oral historian, writer of conscience, and raconteur-on-a-mission Terkel follows his vivid and affecting memoir Touch and Go (2007) with an electrifying set of found treasures: startlingly fresh and newly relevant essays and interviews that have never been published or that only appeared long ago in a strictly local venue. Terkel’s recovered 1961 conversation with James Baldwin is worth the price of admission, so sharply and devastatingly candid is Baldwin about racism’s heavy legacy of fear, lies, brutality, and oppression. Equally timely, if less eviscerating, is Terkel’s incisive conversation with lyricist E. Y. Harburg, who wrote the Great Depression classic “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” In tales of Chicago election shenanigans (’tis the season) and other crimes, Terkel writes with chagrin and bemusement of his hometown under the rule of Janus, the two-faced deity. Hilarious, wry, sorrowful, and prescient, this collection affirms Terkel’s great gift for tapping into the lifeblood of America and discerning, with heart and clarity, exactly what people suffer and how they lift themselves up and keep on keeping on. --Donna Seaman Studs Terkel (1912–2008) was an award-winning author and radio broadcaster. He is the author of Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession ; Division Street: America , Coming of Age: Growing Up in the Twentieth Century ; Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times ; "The Good War": An Oral History of World War II ; Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do ; The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century ; American Dreams: Lost and Found ; The Studs Terkel Interviews: Film and Theater ; Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression ; Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith ; Giants of Jazz ; Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times ; And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey ; Touch and Go: A Memoir ; P.S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening ; and Studs Terkel's Chicago , all published by The New Press. He was 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 Contribution to American Letters, a George Polk Career Award, and the National Book Critics Circle 2003 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.