"In recent years, race has emerged as the leading issue in American politics. The clock has been turned back on the progress of the 1960s, and once again hostility, resentment, and racial conflict threaten to divide the nation. How do ordinary Americans see these changes? How do attitudes towards race affect their daily lives, their relations to their fellow Americans, their images of themselves? Despite hundreds of articles, op-ed pieces, and TV round-tables about race relations, only Studs Terkel has been able to get his compatriots to talk with full honesty and candor about the way they feel." "In previous books such as Working and Hard Times, Americans have told Terkel the truth--even when they've lied to themselves. On this, the most delicate and difficult of all issues, he brings out the full complexity of the thoughts and emotions of both blacks and whites, uncovering a fascinating narrative of changing opinions. Preachers and street punks, college students and Klansmen, interracial couples, the nephew of the founder of apartheid, and Emmett Till's mother are among the voices in Race. In all, nearly a hundred Americans talk openly about attitudes that few are willing to admit in public: feelings about affirmative action and changing neighborhoods, about dashed hopes and secret prejudices. Here too are the hopeful, courageous, and at times remarkable people who refuse to give in to anger and hatred, who see a better future in spite of all current difficulties." "All of Terkel's previous books have been about America's past. Indeed, they have created a mosaic of our history from Hoover to Reagan. In this book, he tackles the present and shows us today's America in all of its ambiguity." "As he has done so often in the past, Terkel has listened to the secrets we try to keep from ourselves and discovered the true voice of America: complicated, puzzled, uncertain. Here is a picture of the country at a crucial time in its history, in a book of exceptional relevance for this election year."--BOOK JACKET