Studs Terkel relayed many great stories

Studs Terkel, the great American story-teller, died on October 31 at age 96.

An excerpt from the L.A. Times obituary:

Blending journalism, history, sociology and literature, Terkel traipsed across the country, tape recorder at the ready, for the next 3 1/2 decades [beginning in the late 1960s].

"I tape, therefore I am," Terkel used to say. "Only one other man has used the tape recorder with as much fervor as I -- Richard Nixon."

. . . Terkel said he had but one goal for each of his books: to open new worlds for his readers. He wanted them to feel what it was like to be a laid-off factory hand during the Depression. Or a soldier facing his first enemy fire. Or a black businessman, or a poor Latino. Or a Miss USA.

"If I can get that in a book," Terkel said, "that's what it's all about."

Thus, in "Hard Times," he probed the guilt many senior citizens felt for having survived the Great Depression. In "Working," he let Americans vent about their jobs -- and found a depressing majority saw themselves as automatons. In "The Good War," he got his subjects to discuss racism, officers shot in the back by their own troops, and other topics that mainstream historians had shied away from."

No one has done more to expand the American library of voices," President Clinton said upon awarding Terkel a National Humanities Medal in 1997.

And his epitaph: "Curiosity did not kill this cat."