"This memoir cuts across worlds, years and the vast spectrum of people that Terkel has known, from workers to famous stars, from Nobel Prize winners to ordinary folk ... Terkel uses some of the methods that have made his radio programs so famous. He cuts from a visit to Chief Luthuli in South Africa to a memoir of the McCarthy period, from growing up among the petty gangsters of Chicago in the thirties to confronting the bigger gangsters of our political life in the sixties, from acting in a radio soap opera to discussing film with Fellini ..."