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A Detroit Story
Simon & Schuster
September 2015
On Sale: September 15, 2015
464 pages
ISBN: 1476748381
EAN: 9781476748382
Kindle: B00P434AUO
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
As David Maraniss captures it with power and affection, Detroit summed up Americaβs path to music and prosperity that was already past history.
Itβs 1963 and Detroit is on top of the world. The cityβs leaders are among the most visionary in America: Grandson of the first Ford; Henry Ford II; influential labor leader Walter Reuther; Motownβs founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the amazing Aretha; Governor George Romney, Mormon and Civil Rights advocate; super car salesman Lee Iacocca; Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, a Kennedy acolyte; Police Commissioner George Edwards; Martin Luther King. It was the American auto makersβ best year; the revolution in music and politics was underway. Reutherβs UAW had helped lift the middle class.
The time was full of promise. The auto industry was selling more cars than ever before and inventing the Mustang. Motown was capturing the world with its amazing artists. The progressive labor movement was rooted in Detroit with the UAW. Martin Luther King delivered his βI Have a Dreamβ speech there two months before he made it famous in the Washington march.
Once in a Great City shows that the shadows of collapse were evident even then. Before the devastating riot. Before the decades of civic corruption and neglect, and white flight. Before people trotted out the grab bag of rust belt infirmitiesβfrom harsh weather to high labor costsβand competition from abroad to explain Detroitβs collapse, one could see the signs of a cityβs ruin. Detroit at its peak was threatened by its own design. It was being abandoned by the new world. Yet so much of what Detroit gave America lasts.
 Media BuzzPBS News Hour - October 5, 2015
Diane Rehm Show - NPR - September 24, 2015
Meet the Press - September 20, 2015
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