Thomas Dyja's sweeping history of his hometown, subtitled "When Chicago Built the American Dream," is the newest One Book, One Chicago selection.

The book covers a wide cast of characters inhabiting post-WWII Chicago–everyone from Mahalia Jackson to Mies van der Rohe, from Hugh Hefner to Howlin' Wolf. Dyja balances deeply personal portraits with in-depth research into how Chicago helped shape midcentury America.

The author joins "Chicago Tonight" on Tuesday for a conversation. Get information on his appearance Wednesday at Harold Washington Library.

Below, some highlights from our conversation.

On the role the public library played in his life:

"Enormous. My mother used to always drag me off to the Belmont-Cragin branch. I spent many hours literally going along the shelf, from book to book. It really was the kind of door pre-Internet; that was really the place that launched me, so having the library be involved in this, and picking me, really is kind of closing the circle."

On his literary heroes, growing up as a Northwest Side kid:

"Sure. Hemingway–you had to. I grew up not too far from Oak Park. [Carl] Sandburg: loved Sandburg. I remember being in high school (and cutting school) and going and sitting on the lakefront and reading Sandburg and saying, 'You know, I think I'd like to be a writer.' It's jaw-dropping to have it kind of come around that way.

"I loved [Nelson] Algren, I always have; and Terkel–Studs was always reading that was a great education in thinking about people. That sense of having this book be about the people from that period really came from those writers who were so about the people around them."

On what made Chicago a cultural powerhouse from 1945-1960:

"Some of it is just geography. Chicago was in the center of America, so it was the capital of Manifest Destiny. There was a period when, if you were taking a train across America, you literally had to stop in Chicago and switch trains. In 1960, you get the first transcontinental jet flights and suddenly, everybody can fly over Chicago. It was more than just metaphorical. But there was a time when everybody had to take Chicago in. It really was the center place of America. It was Vegas before there was Vegas."

Some more of the cultural highlights featured in "The Third Coast":