Louis "Studs" Terkel died October 31, 2008, aged 96, leaving a remarkable prose and radio archive that helped define the twentieth century and the beginnings of the twenty-first. Terkel was in a class of his own as a chronicler of working people in the United States.  He popularized and enriched oral history, stamping the field with a unique appreciation of vernacular and with his own imitable style and voice.  In books such as his classic Working (1974) and Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970), he paid attention as few historians had ever done to the lives, the struggles, the joys of ordinary people.  He did now "give a voice to the voiceless" but through radio and books, as well as theater, he helped amplify voices that others preferred not to.  Throughout his long career, he was also a principled and outspoken activist who defied blacklists, corporate censors, and other authorities to speak out on civil rights, war, and economics.