The Third Coast
When Chicago Built the American Dream

Quotes

“Engrossing…This gallery of vivid portraits makes for an intensely engaging book, notable for its intellectual breadth, arms-wide research, and high-octane prose that keeps it riding high over the mass of details…Like all good histories, the book is crammed with tasty morsels…More important, Mr. Dyja repeatedly presents a nuanced understanding that counterbalances many of today’s convenient preconceptions.” Scott Turow, New York Times bestselling author

“Thomas Dyja’s The Third Coast unravels the wondrous history of Chicago with cunning and aplomb. Every aspect of the Windy City is revealed anew from Mies van der Rohe’s skyscrapers to Chuck Berry’s rock ’n’ roll. A truly gripping narrative. Highly recommended!” Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author

“I am an American, not Chicago-born, but at age nine Chicago was the first big city I visited, and it was love at first sight. I’ve come to know it deeply, however, only through its writers: Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, Studs Terkel, Mike Royko—and now Thomas Dyja. The Third Coast is a vivid, fascinating, surprising, altogether masterful chronicle of this quintessentially American city’s mid-century cultural heyday.” Kurt Andersen, New York Times bestselling author

“Thomas Dyja has written a wonderful book about the cultural cauldron that seethed in twentieth-century Chicago. The Third Coast reminds us that New York and Los Angeles hold no monopoly on American artistic genius. From Louis Sullivan to Richard Wright, from Mahalia Jackson to Nelson Algren, Chicago attracted and inspired talent. Dyja’s well-crafted exploration of Chicago creativity helps us understand why cities are the wellsprings of culture. American society was molded by its cities, and Chicago has played an outsized role in molding music and literature and architecture. Dyja’s engaging writing not only provides an insightful investigation of Chicago’s cultural heroes but also delivers a broader view of how cities shape the sea of civilization.” Edward Glaeser, New York Times bestselling author

“Thomas Dyja’s The Third Coast is a wonderful, beautifully written eye-opener and genuine page-turner about Chicago, as sweeping and astonishing as the city itself. It does nothing less than help rewrite postwar American history and culture and cure our bicoastal myopia. It links half a century’s worth of economic and social changes with cultural revolution, racial strife with sexual upheaval, architecture with politics, literature with gospel music, Hugh Hefner with Tina Fey, Mies van der Rohe with Mayor Daley, Ray Kroc with Katherine Kuh—it’s the whole, grand, messy American story, lived through bigger-than-life in a bigger-than-life city.” Michael Kimmelman, New York Times bestselling author

“A rollicking cultural history…What’s a given now was often given by Chicago: high-rises, gospel and the blues, TV talk shows, Playboy, McDonalds, sketch comedy…Was it all dazzling coincidence or, as Dyja suggests, something in the water?” Vanity Fair

"[A] robust cultural history…Dyja zooms in on the qualities Chicagoans value and does it better than anyone else I’ve read.” New York Times Book Review

"The Third Coast has an elegant, unflinching, non-nostalgic clarity…a new touchstone in Chicago literature…an ambitious history lesson no one had written.” Chicago Tribune

“My God, how I enjoyed this book…[Dyja] offers up Chicago in full…The book is an extraordinarily good read, with writing that sparkles.” Seattle Times

“A magisterial narrative…A luminous, empathetic, and engrossing portrait of a city.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Awards

• Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
• New York Times   Bestseller
• New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books