Not only does Alan Wolfe seem like a nice guy, he actually is a nice guy. Still, he can write a wickedly good book review. He wrote one recently that I admired, despite ultimately disagreeing with (sorry for that sentence-ending preposition). Now he’s written one deflating the Studs Terkel balloon, which should make him about as popular as the Grinch this time of year.
Here’s the beginning. If this doesn’t attract you, don’t read the rest.
Studs Terkel, oral historian extraordinaire, takes the title of his new book from Jessie de la Cruz, a retired farm worker. “If you lose hope,” she told him, “you lose everything.” By allowing political activists, especially those near the ends of their lives, to recount their past struggles for social justice, Terkel hopes to inspire contemporary Americans to take up causes of their own.
Chances are that they will not, at least not if they read what these exhausted, depressed and out-of-touch individuals actually have to say….
