The Night Chicago Died

Studs Terkel, who fostered the delusion that everyone had a story to tell, so that I can’t get in a taxi, take a flight or get a haircut without being regaled with tales of stacking trays, reckoning the actuarial tables and developing the perfect recipe for Caesar salad dressing, has died at the age of 96. The author and radio host had been helping Chicagoans tell their stories on the radio, on television and in books for more than 40 years, all the while keeping the royalties for himself. A nonpracticing lawyer during the Depression, Terkel found a writer’s project with the Works Progress Administration and began writing and performing his own plays and radio dramas. After casting about in the 1950s, he stumbled upon the oral history concept, producing Division Street: America in 1967, where he “borrowed” the stories of residents of Chicago’s Divisions to tell the story of America. He continued ripping off ordinary folks in a number of other works, including “The Good War,” remembrances of World War II that won him the 1985 Pulitzer Prize.