Inside the lives of everyday workers

My 12th-grade English teacher was a curious and active listener. Whenever we sat together to discuss my latest personal essay, he’d ask, “What are you really trying to say?” I’d spill my guts—in ways I’d never done in school before. I told him about my hang-ups, my breakups, my dying mom. He listened in a manner that was simultaneously gentle and intense, and I got the sense that he respected me.

I’m not surprised that he has become an oral historian. In his new book, Working in the 21st Century, Mark Larson interviews more than 100 Americans about what they do for a living: what they love about it, what they’re afraid of, what gives them hope. He peers into the lives of the idealistic abortion doctor and the frustrated middle school teacher, the carefree street performer and the frazzled stay-at-home dad, the wild land firefighter who is exhilarated by the work but embittered by the pay, the woman who—deep breath—wanted to go to law school but got incarcerated and became a welder before taking a job helping felons return to the workforce.

If the concept sounds familiar, it should. The release of Larson’s book was pegged to the 50th anniversary of Studs Terkel’s 1974 classic Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. Larson’s ambition is to update Terkel for the modern world. His interviews address issues that didn’t exist a half century ago, like surviving the pandemic and being perpetually online. Yet the book is more a reminder that people are still people. They want to matter, they care about their kids, and they’re alternately grateful and disgruntled. A glance at the table of contents shows the world hasn’t changed as much as we sometimes think: a pastor, a police officer, a judge, an actor, a brigadier general—such workers do basically the same jobs they did in Terkel’s day and probably still would if we lived in The Jetsons.