Skip to main content

Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times by Studs Terkel, a guest book review

Today's book review is from a guest, our first. The guest is Bea Cotton, a fluffy white Bichon Frise, who has her reviews ghost written by owner Edie Cotton. Both Bea and Edie are great characters that speak the same language — so to speak. Bea woofs in a language called Dogese, which apparently Edie understands and transcribes for us here in her review of Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times by Studs Terkel. Thanks for reading and share your reviews with us by emailing carol doane at gmail.com. Happy Reading!

While just a dog, I simply do not understand the human psychology of denying something that is right in front of you. It’s like saying, “I’m not hot-tempered,” while boasting about pretty much any one human nationality.

So, before you beg to differ, I’ll bark off a list of such “somethings,” in case you human readers don’t understand Dogese:
  • environmental injustice
  • healthcare injustice
  • racial injustice
  • gender injustice
  • housing injustice
  • wage injustice
  • commodity-over-community injustice
  • . . . etc.
CATCH where I am running with this? One is either hot-tempered that these things exist, or hot-tempered that someone has the nerve to mention that they exist. Just makes me want to whimper, “Doggone,” and then chew the squeaker out of my stuffed squirrel.

So, panting to find some hope, people, I picked up a collection of interviews — with congressmen and cooks, union organizers and CEOs, students, immigrants, activists, veterans, priests and lawyers — constituting the alternative American history of ordinary folks. The long short of it: people can surprise you!

So that’s where I’m going this month with book titles:

Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times by Studs Terkel, 2003, The New Press.

About the author: Studs Terkel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, wrote searching interviews with ordinary Americans and helped to establish oral history as a serious genre. His “guerrilla journalism” was not, however, an inquisition as an exploration into the past. He died in 2008 and wanted as his epitaph “Curiosity never killed this cat.”

Friskily yours,

Beatrix

Rating: Howling: Woof-Woof-Woof!
Graphic created by Manop Leklai from Noun Project



Purchase through our affiliate link, and referral fees donated to Woman of Wonder, a college scholarship fund for women.



You may also enjoy, How I got here and why it matters by Carol Doane.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How I got here and why it matters by Carol Doane

When I learned to write complete sentences I had one goal, to write a book. Somewhere in the youthful march through grade school, in some secret place long forgotten, is the book I started. I was seven-years old. I wrote prose, neatly in pencil, on blue lined notebook paper and added tiny illustrations at the top of my chapters. I drew my brother's birthday, bunny cake that celebrated his arrival at the terrible twos with frosting smeared onto his nose by my mother before she took his picture — with a film camera. I wrote about my uncle's visit from the distant country of Texas. I wrote about the way the world hurt and how small I felt. As I raced through school and ploughed down the writing path, I wrote stories and essays that high school teachers returned, scratched with red grammar corrections and tantalizing notes, such as, "This would make a good book." When I graduated college, my reward was to take a break, stop writing, and read what I wanted to

Review: Everything I never told you by Celeste Ng

“Everything here reminds her of what Lydia could have been.”   Lydia, a high school student has died and her mother drifts into her room to experience the smells and sensations of the girl who used to inhabit the space. Across town, Lydia’s father has dropped into another woman’s bed and sleeps tranquilly. Nothing in life has happened as it should. Love gets lost in withheld touches and unspoken thoughts. Parents’ expectations are driven into successive generations and serve as baggage rather than inspiration. Words hurt: “ this,”  referring to Lydia’s parent’s marriage, “isn’t right.” Words are avoided: mixed, interracial, mismatched. Words that could reassure lay stagnant and not vocalized. Words are smithed to cope: “disappeared, fell in the lake, drowned.” The family’s search to understand the daughter who died, their search for a killer to pin their grief on, the destruction of trust, and the slow melting away of relationships show a family on the brink. The sprint to finish this

The Kommandant's Girl by Pam Jenoff, a book review

Once I got into this book I couldn't put it down. As I began, it plucked at me, though, reminding me that this was a first novel as certain ideas fit too perfectly. Mid-journey, it gathered up fully as the writing swelled and the author stoked the fire of the story. While the final chapters felt slightly contrived as characters reconnected, tension rose, fates sealed, and the living left standing had no other option than to move forward. A solid story, characters you care about and hope the best for. Book : The Kommandant's Girl  by Pam Jenoff Source: Purchase. Purchase through our affiliate link, and referral fees donated to  Woman of Wonder , a college scholarship fund for women. Print Length: 384 pages