For Terkel, hope is born of activism, engagement and a stubborn determination to improve the world. In Hope Dies Last, he talks with a wide range of politically engaged Americans, musing on fundamental questions: where does hope spring from? How can it sustain us? How does one instil it in others? As well as talking to well-known figures, including Paul Tibbets (pilot of the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima), sixties activist Tom Hayden and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, Terkel talks to ordinary citizens, such as a deathrow inmate pardoned after serving nearly twenty years for a crime he did not commit and a schoolteacher in a tough inner-city high school. Throughout, he encourages these fascinating people to speak passionately on their life’s work. Hope Dies Last is a celebration of hope in troubled times, an inspiring book about political engagement in the face of indifference.