Working

Working is a landmark oral history by Studs Terkel. The book presents the voices of more than a hundred Americans talking about what they did for a living and how they felt about it. Terkel organizes these first-person accounts thematically by occupation, framing them with his own introductory essay and brief notes. Adam Cohen's foreword, written decades after publication, situates the book as a portrait of working life in the early 1970s, in the waning days of the old economy before computers and modern management transformed the workplace.

In his introduction, Terkel declares that the book is "about violence, to the spirit as well as to the body," encompassing not only industrial accidents but ulcers, nervous breakdowns, and daily humiliations. He describes work as a search for meaning and recognition as much as for wages, and observes that a wish to be remembered ran through virtually every conversation. He identifies a widespread discontent cutting across class lines: Blue-collar and white-collar workers alike described themselves as machines, mules, and robots. A questioning of the traditional work ethic, especially among younger people, stirred grievances in older workers who had been silent. Terkel notes the coping strategies his subjects employed, from daydreaming and minor rebellion to humor and the assumption of alternate identities. He closes the introduction with Tom Patrick, a Brooklyn fireman who articulated a desire for labor that "shows something I did on this earth."

Three prefaces establish the book's central tensions. Mike LeFevre, a thirty-seven-year-old steelworker near Chicago, handled tens of thousands of pounds of steel daily and wished that buildings bore the names of every laborer who built them. He redirected his ambitions toward his children, hoping his son would attend college, and deliberately dented the products he made so he could say he left his mark. Three young newsboys in Indiana describe the petty indignities of their routes, with fourteen-year-old Terry Pickens bluntly rejecting the myth that delivering newspapers builds character. Carl Murray Bates, a fifty-seven-year-old Indiana stonemason, offers the counterpoint: a man whose craft and imagination were inseparable, who daydreamed constantly about stone and regarded his work as a form of immortality.

Book One turns to the land. Pierce Walker, a southern Indiana farmer, describes the gamble of weather, prices, and rising costs that was steadily driving small farmers out. Roberto Acuna, a former migrant farm worker, recounts a childhood of poverty, child labor, and racial humiliation in California fields. Now organizing for the United Farm Workers of America, a farmworkers' labor union, Acuna found a sense of belonging through the movement led by labor leader César Chávez. In eastern Kentucky, Aunt Katherine Haynes, seventy-seven, lived alone amid strip-mining bulldozers. Her nephew Joe Haynes and his wife, Susie Haynes, describe how mineral rights sold by their grandfather for pennies an acre allowed companies to destroy their land and threaten their family cemetery.

Book Two moves into the world of communications and media. Sharon Atkins, a young receptionist, describes becoming an extension of her switchboard, her personality flattened by constant interruption. Terry Mason, an airline stewardess, recounts exhausting thirteen-hour duty days and the elaborate grooming requirements of training. Beryl Simpson, a former airline reservationist, describes how computers reduced her to a timed extension of the reservation system, monitored for every minute. Roberta Victor, a former prostitute, frames her experience as an intensification of what most American women were taught. Barbara Herrick, a script supervisor and producer at a major advertising agency, navigated constant sexism while building her career.

Book Three addresses cleaning and watching. Maggie Holmes, a domestic worker for twenty-five years, recounts confronting employers who expected her to scrub floors on her knees and tested her honesty with planted money. Louis Hayward, a washroom attendant at a Chicago hotel, describes the humiliation of his position and his suppressed desire to write. Vincent Maher, a policeman, defends forceful policing as community protection. Renault Robinson, a Black policeman and founder of the Afro-American Patrolmen's League, an organization advocating for Black police officers, describes systematic racial double standards within the department.

Book Four, titled "The Demon Lover," is the book's longest section, devoted to the automobile and its human toll. Phil Stallings, a spot-welder at a Ford plant, describes pushing a button thousands of times daily and the necessity of daydreaming to avoid going mad. His colleague Jim Grayson, a Black worker attending college part-time, notes that workers deliberately ignored quality specifications. A wildcat work stoppage, triggered by a foreman confrontation, produced a rare moment of unity across racial lines. At the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, Gary Bryner, the twenty-nine-year-old president of the local United Auto Workers (UAW) union chapter, describes a strike against the fastest assembly line in the world as a fight for human dignity. Frank Decker, an interstate steel hauler, recounts organizing fellow truckers against exploitation.

Book Five gathers workers defined by appearance, counting, and physical movement. Grace Clements, a felter at a luggage factory, repeated a forty-second production cycle hundreds of times daily in extreme heat, yet her union activism transformed her into a politically engaged person. Dolores Dante, a waitress for twenty-three years, describes her work as theater and resents the phrase "just a waitress." Therese Carter, a housewife, expresses guilt about enjoying domestic life, while Jesusita Novarro, a welfare mother and part-time case aide, insists that a mother working in the home deserves respect.

Book Six profiles quieter occupations. Donna Murray, a bookbinder, describes the pleasure of restoring centuries-old volumes. Steve Carmichael, an antipoverty coordinator, finds himself becoming the bureaucrat he wanted to replace. Book Seven ranges from professional sports to corporate power. Eric Nesterenko, a hockey player, describes the tension between the joy of skating and the cynicism of professional sports. Larry Ross, a former conglomerate president, analyzes corporate life as a jungle where loyalty was meaningless and a fired executive carried "the smell of death."

Book Eight contrasts generational attitudes. Bud Freeman, a sixty-five-year-old jazz saxophonist, declares he will play until they put the instrument on top of him. Kay Stepkin directs a bakery cooperative where everyone earned seven dollars a day and no machines were used. The "Cradle to the Grave" section traces the life cycle through workers who served it, from Ruth Lindstrom, a baby nurse, to Elmer Ruiz, a gravedigger who wore black sunglasses to hide his eyes when burying young people.

Book Nine gathers voices in search of a calling. Nora Watson, a staff writer, articulates one of the book's central themes: "Most of us are looking for a calling, not a job." The book's final sequence, "Fathers and Sons," presents intergenerational pairs illustrating how work values were transmitted and transformed. Steve Dubi, a steel inspector for forty years, describes himself as "just a number." His son, Father Leonard Dubi, channeled his father's suppressed anger into parish activism, organizing thousands against pollution and corporate power. Harold Patrick, a sixty-six-year-old freight elevator operator, reflects on a lifetime of manual labor, while his son Bob Patrick, an emergency service patrolman, fears that constant exposure to death was eroding his capacity to feel. The book's final voice belongs to Tom Patrick, Bob's brother and a fireman, whose words echo the opening: "I can look back and say, 'I helped put out a fire. I helped save somebody.' It shows something I did on this earth."