Few other cities have had their industrial past immortalized like Chicago. Perhaps it’s because of its rapid and rugged rise from a marshy, frontier outpost into one of the nation’s leading metropolises. Perhaps because of the grit of its entrepreneurs and its workers, who rebuilt upon the city’s own ashes a more prosperous one that dared to reach for the sky. Or, perhaps we were just damn lucky to have a run of great writers who found a dark beauty in the smoke and soot and steel that coalesced and conspired to create the Chicago of the world’s imagination.

Whether good or bad, it was the industriousness of Chicago’s people and its business community that armed the pens of writers like Theodore Dreiser, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren, and Stuart Dybek. ...

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