which Terkel played the owner of a cheap diner, ran during the late '40s and early '50s. He also appeared in the 1988 movie Eight Men Out, about the 1919 Black Sox Scandal.

In addition to The Good War, Terkel collected oral histories of the Great Depression in Hard Times (1970) and, in 1974, Pantheon published Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. In nine books organized by theme, Terkel interviewd everyday Americans from all rungs of the socioeconomic ladder about how they experience employment. The first chapter, subtitled "Working the Land," contains accounts from farmers and miners, among others. The rest of the book ranges through professions from grave digger to supermarket clerk to business executive, creating afocused stories reflect Ray's existence through the phases of his life like shards of a broken mirror--small snippets that, pieced together, form an arc. He chooses quiet moments that are both poignant and illustrative about Ray's character--the luncheon in which he discovers that his first wife will ultimately leave him, the professional breaks that give him the highest hopes, and the subtle, racially charged interactions that taint his workaday existence. The collection shares common ground with Richard Linklater's film Boyhood, whose focus on a young man in a different era carries the same melancholy sense of time's passage. Through Holman's wry, observant prose, we see more than just a highlight reel of births, deaths and loves gained and lost. We see, instead, the multi-faceted nature of a man's