Most authors write their own words. Studs Terkel, born May 16, 1912, did something different. He wrote other people's words. Terkel was an oral historian -- someone who records history by interviewing people and preserving their spoken stories. His method was simple. He sat down with ordinary Americans -- steelworkers, waitresses, teachers, firefighters -- and asked them about their lives. Then he transcribed their words exactly as they spoke them, keeping their grammar, their slang, and their pauses. His most famous book, Working (1974), contains interviews with over 130 people about their jobs. A telephone operator describes the monotony of connecting calls all day. A stonemason explains the pride he feels when he drives past a building he helped construct. A washroom attendant talks about being invisible to the people she serves. Terkel believed that everyone's story deserved to be heard, not just the stories of presidents and generals. He called his method "guerrilla journalism" -- going to the people rather than waiting for the news to come to him. His books gave a voice to Americans who rarely appeared in traditional history books. Terkel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for The Good War, an oral history of World War II told entirely through the memories of people who lived through it.