Coming of Age

Growing Up in the Twentieth Century

Studs Terkel

paperback

$16.95 / £10.99

A New York Times bestseller when it was first published in 1995, Coming of Age presents an astonishing portrait of American life and the experience of aging in the twentieth century, drawn from the stories of seventy-four very different people, the youngest of whom is seventy and the oldest ninety-nine. Inspiring in the honesty of their voices and their lack of nostalgia or illusions, these are people with the widest range of experiences from all around the country; many were at the vanguard of their movements, whether of trade unions, gay liberation, or the arts. They remind us what we once were, what we have lost, and the extraordinary extent to which we’ve been transformed as a society over the last hundred odd years.

Studs Terkel is the author of twelve books of oral history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters, he was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. He lives in Chicago.