Synopses & Reviews
At the age of 88, Studs Terkel has turned to the ultimate human experience, that of death and the possibility of life afterward. Death is the one experience we all share but cannot know. In Studs Terkel's powerful new book,
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? a wide range of people address that final experience and its impact on the present in which we live. In talking about the ultimate and unknowable culmination of our lives, these people give voice to their deepest beliefs and hopes, reflecting on the lives they have led and what still lies before them. The result is a book that may well be Terkel's most popular, a universal and deeply moving account of death and religion.
This is the first time Terkel addresses the whole realm of religious belief and of expectations of an afterlife, including reincarnation. Interviewing a fascinating variety of people, he is able to come up with an extraordinary range of experience and of belief, all of which prove far more complex than Terkel anticipated.
In the tradition of his books Working and Coming of Age, Studs Terkel addresses an issue bound up with all of our lives, yet rarely discussed on its own terms. From a Hiroshima survivor to an AIDS caseworker, from a death-row parolee to a woman who emerged from a two-year coma, these interviewees find an eloquence and grace in dealing with a topic many of us have yet to discuss openly and freely.
Terkel also interviews the vast array of people who confront death in their everyday lives, whether as policemen, firemen, emergency health workers, doctors, or nurses. Many of the most moving interviews deal with AIDS, and how the disease has devastated whole communities and forced people to face death at the young ages we associate with centuries past.
In a stunning capstone to his extraordinary career, Terkel introduces to us the variety of our reactions to life's ultimate experience.
Review
"Terkel, a gifted interviewer, encourages the subjects of this book to talk openly about their feelings regarding life's final frontier....Each of Terkel's subjects brings his or her unique insights to the mystery of death....Terkel's refusal to overwhelm readers with his own philosophical reflections and his willingness to allow ordinary men and women to speak for themselves make this a stirring and enlightening collection that will lead readers to think more deeply about their own hopes and fears." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Terkel takes on this subject in his usual inclusive manner....An involving celebration of life and exploration of death." Mary Carroll, Booklist
Review
"Much of the book is devoted to exploring different perspectives on meaning, from ministers and rabbis to humanists and atheists. Their views are richly personal and often surprisingly similar. Most absorbing is Terkel himself, who allows readers a rare peek into his life and beliefs in the introduction." Paul Kleyman, Aging Today
Review
"I felt like I was sitting in on the conversations. The book was so engrossing that I toted it to work with me every day. I couldnt read much at home, because my husband would take the book to read himself as soon as I walked in the door....Ironically, this book about death is really about living....The message...is that the simplest acts can have the most far-reaching results results that can even transcend death." Liz Bardon, The New Times
Review
"Few have matched his track record for tapping the national mood." James Janega, Chicago Tribune
Review
"Painful and jarring as many of the accounts are, the overall tone of the book is not dark." Katie Bacon, The Atlantic
Review
"[S]hould...interest psychologists....And many readers especially those who have lost someone they loved have told Terkel his book has the power to heal." Rebecca A. Clay, Monitor on Psychology
About the Author
Studs Terkel had a daily radio show on WFMT in Chicago which was carried on stations throughout the country until last year, when he moved to the Chicago Historical Society to begin archiving his massive collection of interviews.