I think we all have a book that, although perhaps not the greatest we have read, was the one that had more impact on our lives than any other. In my case, it was Division Street, America by Studs Terkel, which lured me to its location, Chicago, three years after publication in 1967, and thence on a trajectory that culminated in my meeting Studs in 1995.

Terkel died, aged 96, four days before Barack Obama was elected President, seemingly bequesting the mantle of being the favourite son of Chicago, America's real capital city, which makes the paperback publication of this memoir especially poignant.

The generous genius of 'Toikel' - as he was addressed - is that, unlike most people, he listened. That's how he gave voice to 'ordinary people who have done extraordinary things', which was his greatest service to literature. He acquired his propelling force, 'curiosity', as a boy whose parents ran a boarding hotel for migrant workers during the Twenties.

Now we have a chance to read Studs talking about himself - though only just, for the population of this memoir by other people is, unsurprisingly, one of its great joys. The other is the man himself - his cheek, his humour.

Studs is the champion of vernacular democracy, a kind of documentary Steinbeck. Touch and Go charts the lifetime of a man who lived through, and immersed himself in, the railway-yard, smokestack American century of depression, war and the civil rights movement, until such time as 'the unique landmarks of American cities have been replaced by Golden Arches ... and Marriotts, so you can no longer tell one neon wilderness from another'.

By the same lights, his epic narrative of confrontation between unions and bosses, socialism and fascism, rolled-up sleeves and FBI sneaks has been subjugated by universal faith in 'our new religion: Free Marketry'. But Terkel's humanism does not die with Terkel, as this little book urges towards its end, considering Hannah Arendt's phrase 'the banality of evil'. 'Let us reverse the phrase,' insists Studs, 'let's call it, even more properly, the evil of banality.' Yes, Studs, let's.