eBooks are accessible online, and many are available for download or 2 week check out.
Coney Detroit by
Detroit is the world capital of the Coney Island hot dog-a natural-casing hot dog topped with an all-meat beanless chili, chopped white onions, and yellow mustard. In Coney Detroit, authors Katherine Yung and Joe Grimm investigate all aspects of the beloved regional delicacy, which was created by Greek immigrants in the early 1900s. Coney Detroit traces the history of the Coney Island restaurant, which existed in many cities but thrived nowhere as it did in Detroit, and surveys many of the hundreds of independent and chain restaurants in business today. In more than 150 mouth-watering photographs and informative, playful text, readers will learn about the traditions, rivalries, and differences between the restaurants, some even located right next door to each other. Coney Detroit showcases such Metro Detroit favorites as American Coney Island, Lafayette Coney Island, Duly's Coney Island, Kerby's Coney Island, National Coney Island, and Leo's Coney Island. As Yung and Grimm uncover the secret ingredients of an authentic Detroit Coney, they introduce readers to the suppliers who produce the hot dogs, chili sauce, and buns, and also reveal the many variations of the Coney-including Coney tacos, Coney pizzas, and Coney omelets. While the Coney legend is centered in Detroit, Yung and Grimm explore Coney traditions in other Michigan cities, including Flint, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Port Huron, Pontiac, and Traverse City, and even venture to some notable Coney Islands outside of Michigan, from the east coast to the west. Most importantly, the book introduces and celebrates the families and individuals that created and continue to proudly serve Detroit's favorite food. Not a book to be read on an empty stomach, Coney Detroit deserves a place in every Detroiter or Detroiter-at-heart's collection.
Detroit's Cold War : The Origins of Postwar Conservatism by
Detroit's Cold War locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on meticulous archival research focusing on Detroit, Colleen Doody shows how conflict over business values and opposition to labor, anticommunism, racial animosity, and religion led to the development of a conservative ethos in the aftermath of World War II. Using Detroit--with its large population of African-American and Catholic immigrant workers, strong union presence, and starkly segregated urban landscape--as a case study, Doody articulates a nuanced understanding of anticommunism during the Red Scare. Looking beyond national politics, she focuses on key debates occurring at the local level among a wide variety of common citizens. In examining this city's social and political fabric, Doody illustrates that domestic anticommunism was a cohesive, multifaceted ideology that arose less from Soviet ideological incursion than from tensions within the American public.
Detroit: A Biography by
At its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Detroit's status as epicenter of the American auto industry made it a vibrant, populous, commercial hub--and then the bottom fell out. Detroit: A Biography takes a long, unflinching look at the evolution of one of America's great cities and one of the nation's greatest urban failures. This authoritative yet accessible narrative seeks to explain how the city grew to become the heart of American industry and how its utter collapse--from nearly two million residents in 1950 to less than 715,000 some six decades later--resulted from a confluence of public policies, private industry decisions, and deeply ingrained racism. Drawing from U.S. Census data and including profiles of individuals who embody the recent struggles and hopes of the city, this book chronicles the evolution of what a modern city once was and what it has become.
The Fall and Recapture of Detroit in the War of 1812 by
The focus of the opening campaign of the War of 1812 was Detroit, a location the War Department considered one of the significant launching points for the invasion of Canada. Detroit's surrender only two months after the declaration of war shocked the nation and led to the court-martial of Brigadier General William Hull. Hull was sentenced to death--the only commanding general ever to receive such a sentence in U.S. military history--and has been vilified by many historians to the present day for his decision to surrender. In The Fall and Recapture of Detroit in the War of 1812: In Defense of William Hull, author Anthony J. Yanik reconsiders Hull's abrupt surrender and the general's defense that the decision was based on sound humanitarian grounds. Yanik begins by tracing the political roots of the War of 1812 and giving readers an idea of what life was like in the tiny frontier settlement of Detroit in the years leading up to the war. He moves on to Hull's appointment as brigadier general and the assembly of the North Western Army in the summer of 1812, culminating in their arduous journey to Detroit and botched invasion of Canada. Yanik then details Hull's surrender and its repercussions for Detroit, including life under British rule and the eventual recapture of Detroit by American forces. Yanik also probes the general's court-martial for cowardice in 1814, arguing that a close examination of the testimony of the witnesses, an analysis of Hull's defense, and a review of the actual events themselves raise many questions about the credibility of the verdict that was issued. Including a chronology of Hull's Detroit campaign and appendixes with historical writings and speeches from the officials involved in the war effort, The Fall and Recapture of Detroit in the War of 1812 will be enjoyable reading for military and local historians, just in time for the upcoming bicentennial anniversary of the War of 1812.
Old Slow Town: Detroit During the Civil War by
Though it was located far away from Southern battlefields, Detroit churned with unrest during the American Civil War. The city's population, including a large German and Irish immigrant community, mostly aligned with anti-war Democrats while the rest of the state stood with the pro-Lincoln Republicans. The virulently anti-Lincoln and anti-Black Detroit Free Press fanned the city's flames with provocative coverage of events. In "Old Slow Town": Detroit during the Civil War, award-winning author Paul Taylor contends that the anger within Detroit's diverse political and ethnic communities over questions about the war's purpose and its conduct nearly tore the city in two. Taylor charts Civil War-era Detroit's evolution from a quiet but growing industrial city (derisively called "old slow town" by some visitors) to a center of political contention and controversy. In eight chapters, Taylor details topics including the pre-war ethnic and commercial development of the city; fear and suspicion of "secret societies"; issues of race, gender, and economic strife during the war; Detroit's response to its soldiers' needs; and celebration and remembrance at the conclusion of the conflict. Taylor's use of rarely seen military correspondence from the National Archives, soldier and civilian diaries and letters, period articles and editorials from Detroit's Civil War-era newspapers, and his fresh, judicious synthesis of secondary sources results in a captivating depiction of Detroit's Civil War history. Until now, why events occurred as they did in Detroit during the Civil War and what life was like for its residents has only been touched upon in any number of general histories. Readers interested in American history, Civil War history, or the ethnic history of Detroit will appreciate the full picture of the time period Taylor presents in "Old Slow Town."
Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit by
From the mid-nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century, environmentally unregulated industrial capitalism produced outsized environmental risks for poor and working-class Detroiters, made all the worse for African Americans by housing and job discrimination. Then as the auto industry abandoned Detroit, the banking and real estate industries turned those risks into disasters with predatory loans to African American homebuyers, and to an increasingly indebted city government. Following years of cuts in welfare assistance to poor families and a devastating subprime mortgage meltdown, the state of Michigan used municipal debt to justify suspending democracy in majority-Black cities. In Detroit and Flint, austerity policies imposed under emergency financial management deprived hundreds of thousands of people of clean water, with lethal consequences that most recently exacerbated the spread of COVID-19. Toxic Debt is not only a book about racism, capitalism, and the making of these environmental disasters. It is also a history of Detroit's environmental justice movement, which emerged from over a century of battles over public health in the city and involved radical auto workers, ecofeminists, and working-class women fighting for clean water. Linking the histories of urban political economy, the environment, and social movements, Toxic Debt lucidly narrates the story of debt, environmental disaster, and resistance in Detroit.
Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes : An Oral History of Detroit's African American Community, 1918-1967 by
More than one hundred individuals who lived in Detroit at some time during the period from 1918 to 1967 share stories about everyday life--families and neighborhoods, community and religious life, school and work. They also describe extraordinary events--the great migration from the South, the depression, World War II, the 1943 race riot, the civil rights movement, the civil disturbance of 1967, and the Vietnam War. Their anecdotal testimonies and reminiscences provide invaluable information about the institutions, lifestyles, relationships, and politics that constitute the black experience in Detroit. By featuring the histories of blacks living in Detroit during the first six decades of the century, this unique oral history contributes immeasurably to our understanding of the development of the city.
Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot Of 1967 by
On July 23, 1967, the Detroit police raided a blind pig (after-hours drinking establishment), touching off the most destructive urban riot of the 1960s. It took the U.S. Army, the Michigan National Guard, the Michigan State Police, and the Detroit police department--17,000 men--more than a week to restore order. When all was done, the riot had claimed 43 lives (mostly Black) and resulted in nearly 700 injuries. Over 7,000 individuals were arrested, with property damage estimates over $75 million. Yet, Detroit had been lauded nationally as a "model city" in the governance of a large industrial metropolis. On the 40th anniversary of this nation-changing event, we are pleased to reissue Sidney Fine's seminal work--a detailed study of what happened, why, and with what consequences.
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The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits by
From the MacArthur genius grant winner, a beautifully written and revelatory look at the slave origins of a major northern American city. Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree--both native and African American--in the frontier outpost of Detroit, a place wildly remote yet at the center of national and international conflict. Skillfully assembling fragments of a distant historical record, Miles introduces new historical figures and unearths struggles that remained hidden from view until now. The result is fascinating history, little explored and eloquently told, of the limits of freedom in early America, one that adds new layers of complexity to the story of a place that exerts a strong fascination in the media and among public intellectuals, artists, and activists. A book that opens the door on a completely hidden past, The Dawn of Detroit is a powerful and elegantly written history, one that completely changes our understanding of slavery?s American legacy.
Detroit's Coming of Age, 1873-1973 by
Detroit's Coming of Age is a different kind of history. It's a history written by a dramatist-reporter who knows that it is wonderful, various, cantankerous, adventurous people who make news-and the same people who give Detroit its identity. It's the baseball players and the cops and the politicians and the newspaper reporters who really make Detroit come alive this year or any year in our history. The battles and embarrassments and love stories that make up our Detroit tradition are all in this book. They are not stories that many present-day Detroiters know. But they are stories that every Detroiter will want to read.
Detroit: A Motor City History by
On July 24, 1701, Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac stood in the heart of the wilderness on a bluff overlooking the Detroit River and claimed this frontier in the name of Louis XIV; thus began the story of Detroit, a city marked by pioneering spirits, industrial acumen, and uncommon durability. Over the course of its 300-year history, Detroit has been sculpted into a city unique in the American experience by its extraordinary mixture of diverse cultures: American Indian, French, British, American colonial, and a variety of immigrant newcomers. Detroit: A Motor City History documents the major events that shaped this once-small French fur-trading outpost across three centuries of conflict and prosperity. Through informative text and a variety of imagery, readers experience firsthand the struggles of the nascent village against raiding Indian tribes and the incessant political and military tug of war between the colonial French and English, and then American interests. Like many other major cities across the United States, Detroit played a pivotal role in establishing the country's economic and industrial power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, serving as a center for its well-known civilian and military mass-production resources. This visual history provides insight into Detroit's rapid evolution from a hamlet into a metropolis against a backdrop of important community and national affairs: the decimating fire of 1805, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and both world wars.
Motor City Mafia: A Century of Organized Crime in Detroit by
Motor City Mafia: A Century of Organized Crime in Detroit chronicles the storied and hallowed gangland history of the notorious Detroit underworld. Scott M. Burnstein takes the reader inside the belly of the beast, tracking the bloodshed, exploits, and leadership of the southeast Michigan crime syndicate as never before seen in print. Through a stunning array of rare archival photographs and images, Motor City Mafia captures Detroit's most infamous past, from its inception in the early part of the 20th century, through the years when the iconic Purple Gang ruled the city's streets during Prohibition, through the 1930s and the formation of the local Italian mafia, and the Detroit crime family's glory days in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, all the way to the downfall of the area's mob reign in the 1980s and 1990s.
Muddy Boots and Ragged Aprons: Images of Working-Class Detroit, 1900-1930 by
This text focuses on the working people who, in the first three decades of the 20th century, made Detroit into one of the world's great industrial cities. Telling their stories through photographs with captions explaining its content and context, it examines the world as they lived and changed it.
Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story by
As David Maraniss captures it with power and affection, Detroit summed up America's path to music and prosperity that was already past history. It's 1963 and Detroit is on top of the world. The city's leaders are among the most visionary in America: Grandson of the first Ford; Henry Ford II; influential labor leader Walter Reuther; Motown's 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 makers' best year; the revolution in music and politics was underway. Reuther's 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 "I Have a Dream" 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 infirmities--from harsh weather to high labor costs--and competition from abroad to explain Detroit's collapse, one could see the signs of a city's 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.
Secret Detroit: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure by
Detroit is known for its automotive heritage, the Motown sound, and America's first mile of concrete highway. But this city on the river has more than three hundred years of history, and most of it is mighty strange. There's the Fisher Mansion, which was once home to rum-running gangsters and now houses one of Michigan's largest Hari Krishna populations. Picturesque Belle Isle once stored nuclear missiles among its playgrounds and fishing lagoons. Then there are incredible landmarks like Detroit's massive salt mines and a monument to urban graffiti known as the Dequindre Cut, and the world's oldest operating jazz club. Secret Detroit explores this great American city to investigate everything that is odd, unexpected, and extraordinary. Detroit is the kind of city you need to see and experience to understand why locals brag about being from the Motor City. Full of stories and tall tales, this book is a must-have for urban explorers, history buffs, and travelers of all experience levels.
This Is Detroit, 1701-2001 by
Arthur M. Woodford takes readers back to the days of Cadillac's settlement and leads them through Detroit's transition from French village to British fort to American town. As the city's history unfolds, he describes the issues facing its inhabitants in different eras, including westward expansion, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and two world wars. Woodford brings his history up to the present day by surveying Detroit's new cultural landscape, focusing on its current renaissance. Written in a brisk, engaging style and filled with historic illustrations and photographs, Woodford's work is an enjoyable and authoritative overview that captures the wide scope and great variety of a proud and multifaceted city. Published under the auspices of Detroit 300, this handsome volume is a highlight of the city's tricentennial celebration, presenting Detroit's best face to the world--and to the future.
Detroit: A Guide to the Resources in the Bentley Historical Library by
A guide to primary source documents, serials, maps, and other materials related to Detroit's history.
Michigan Biographical Dictionary by
"People of all times and all places who have been important to the history and life of the state."
Michigan Place Names: The History of the Founding and the Naming of More Than 5000 Past and Present Michigan Communities by
From Aabec in Antrim County to Zutphen in Ottawa County, from Hell to Hooker, Michigan Place Names is a compendium of information on the origins of the state's geographical names. With alphabetically arranged thumb-nail sketches, Walter Romig introduces readers to a host of colorful personalities and episodes which have achieved notoriety, though sometimes short-lived, by devising or lending their names to the state's settlements. For the curious, the librarian, the genealogist, or the historian, his book is an indispensable resource. Michigan Place Names is another "Michigan classic" reissued as a Great Lakes Book.
The State of Black Michigan, 1967-2007 by
During the summer of 1967, race riots swept across U.S. cities. Detroit was the scene of one of the worst of these. "The State of Black Michigan" is a landmark volume that investigates how, since 1967, Michigan's black population has changed, how its interactions with the white community have altered, and, most important, how policymakers can act to further narrow the "equality gap" that continues to persist. In the wake of the 1967 Detroit riots, in which 43 people were killed, President Lyndon Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders and posed these questions: What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again? The commission concluded that white racism spurred the violence and that "our society is moving toward two societies, one black, and one white separate and unequal." "The State of Black Michigan" takes Johnson's questions further and applies them to Michigan's black citizens today: Are the ingredients of the explosive mixture that erupted in 1967 still present? What differences are there forty years later? Is Michigan in fact a state with two separate and unequal societies? The twenty essays in this volume pursue the answers to these questions by studying a broad range of topics, including socioeconomic inequality, black self-help, black business development, residential segregation, crime, health, and political representation. The essays report and reflect on the racial disparities that still remain. " The State of Black Michigan, 1967 2007" uses the most recent data available and expands on reports the editors published annually between 1984 and 1993 with the Urban Affairs Programs at Michigan State University and the Michigan Council of Urban League Executives. With the goal of racial equality still frustratingly elusive, and with reliable data often difficult to obtain, it is hoped that "The State of Black Michigan" will serve as a magnet for conversation and debate about race, inequality, and the need for action."
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Canvas Detroit by
Detroit's unique and partly abandoned cityscape has scarred its image around the world for decades. But in the last several years journalists have begun to view the city through a different lens, focusing on the wide range of contemporary artists finding inspiration amid the emptiness and adding a more complex chapter to the story of a city long labeled as a haunting symbol of U.S. economic decline. In "Canvas Detroit, "Julie Pincus and Nichole Christian combine vibrant full-color photography of the city's much-buzzed-about art scene with thoughtful narrative that explores the art and artists that are re-creating Detroit. "" " ""Canvas Detroit" captures hundreds of pieces of artwork in many forms-including large-scale and small-scale murals, sculptures, portraits, light projections, wearable art, and installations (made with wood, glass, living plants, fiber, and fabric). Works are situated in both obvious and more hidden spaces, including on and in houses, garages, factories, alleyways, doors, and walls, while some structures have been entirely transformed into art. Pincus and Christian profile internationally known figures like Banksy, Matthew Barney, and Tyree Guyton; prominent Detroit artists such as Scott Hocking, Jerome Ferretti, and Robert Sestock; and collectives like Power House Productions, Hygenic Dress League, the Empowerment Plan, and Theatre Bizarre. "Canvas Detroit "also features contributions by Marion Jackson, John Gallagher, Michael H. Hodges, Rebecca R. Hart, and Linda Yablonsky that contextualize the current artistic moment in the city. This beautifully designed and informative volume showcases the stunning breadth and depth of artwork currently being done in Detroit. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in arts and culture in the city.
Detroit's Historic Places of Worship by
In Detroit's Historic Places of Worship, authors Marla O. Collum, Barbara E. Krueger, and Dorothy Kostuch profile 37 architecturally and historically significant houses of worship that represent 8 denominations and nearly 150 years of history. The authors focus on Detroit's most prolific era of church building, the 1850s to the 1930s, in chapters that are arranged chronologically. Entries begin with each building's founding congregation and trace developments and changes to the present day. Full-color photos by Dirk Bakker bring the interiors and exteriors of these amazing buildings to life, as the authors provide thorough architectural descriptions, pointing out notable carvings, sculptures, stained glass, and other decorative and structural features. Nearly twenty years in the making, this volume includes many of Detroit's most well known churches, like Sainte Anne in Corktown, the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Boston-Edison, Saint Florian in Hamtramck, Mariners' Church on the riverfront, Saint Mary's in Greektown, and Central United Methodist Church downtown. But the authors also provide glimpses into stunning buildings that are less easily accessible or whose uses have changed-such as the original Temple Beth-El (now the Bonstelle Theater), First Presbyterian Church (now Ecumenical Theological Seminary), and Saint Albertus (now maintained by the Polish American Historical Site Association)-or whose future is uncertain, like Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church (most recently Abyssinian Interdenominational Center, now closed). Appendices contain information on hundreds of architects, artisans, and crafts-people involved in the construction of the churches, and a map pinpoints their locations around the city of Detroit. Anyone interested in Detroit's architecture or religious history will be delighted by Detroit's Historic Places of Worship.
Henry Ford's Plan for the American Suburb: Dearborn and Detroit by
Around Detroit, suburbanization was led by Henry Ford, who not only located a massive factory over the city's border in Dearborn, but also was the first industrialist to make the automobile a mass consumer item. So, suburbanization in the 1920s was spurred simultaneously by the migration of the automobile industry and the mobility of automobile users. A welfare capitalist, Ford was a leader on many fronts--he raised wages, increased leisure time, and transformed workers into consumers, and he was the most effective at making suburbs an intrinsic part of American life. The decade was dominated by this new political economy--also known as "Fordism"--linking mass production and consumption. The rise of Dearborn demonstrated that Fordism was connected to mass suburbanization as well. Ultimately, Dearborn proved to be a model that was repeated throughout the nation, as people of all classes relocated to suburbs, shifting away from central cities. Mass suburbanization was a national phenomenon. Yet the example of Detroit is an important baseline since the trend was more discernable there than elsewhere. Suburbanization, however, was never a simple matter of outlying communities growing in parallel with cities. Instead, resources were diverted from central cities as they were transferred to the suburbs. The example of the Detroit metropolis asks whether the mass suburbanization which originated there represented the "American dream," and if so, by whom and at what cost. This book will appeal to those interested in cities and suburbs, American studies, technology and society, political economy, working-class culture, welfare state systems, transportation, race relations, and business management.
Revolution Detroit : Strategies for Urban Reinvention by
After decades of suburban sprawl, job loss, and lack of regional government, Detroit has become a symbol of post-industrial distress and also one of the most complex urban environments in the world. In Revolution Detroit: Strategies for Urban Reinvention, John Gallagher argues that Detroit's experience can offer valuable lessons to other cities that are, or will soon be, dealing with the same broken municipal model. A follow-up to his award-winning 2010 work, Reimagining Detroit, this volume looks at Detroit's successes and failures in confronting its considerable challenges. It also looks at other ideas for reinvention drawn from the recent history of other cities, including Cleveland, Flint, Richmond, Philadelphia, and Youngstown, as well as overseas cities, including Manchester and Leipzig. Revolution Detroit surveys four key areas: governance, education and crime, economic models, and the repurposing of vacant urban land. Among the topics Gallagher covers are effective new urban governance models developed in Cleveland and Detroit; new education models highlighting low-income-but-high-achievement schools and districts; creative new entrepreneurial business models emerging in Detroit and other post-industrial cities; and examples of successful repurposing of vacant urban land through urban agriculture, restoration of natural landscapes, and the use of art in public places. He concludes with a cautious yet hopeful message that Detroit may prove to be the world's most important venue for successful urban experimentation and that the reinvention portrayed in the book can be repeated in many cities. Gallagher's extensive traveling and research, along with his long career covering urban redevelopment for the Detroit Free Press, has given him an unmatched perspective on Detroit's story. Readers interested in urban studies and recent Detroit history will appreciate this thoughtful assessment of the best practices and obvious errors when it comes to reinventing our cities.
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The Buildings of Detroit: A History by
First published in 1968, The Buildings of Detroit: A History by W. Hawkins Ferry is the definitive resource on the architecture of Detroit and its adjacent communities, from pioneering times to the end of the twentieth century. Ferry based his impressive volume on thirteen years of meticulous research, interviews with many prominent architects, and hundreds of photos commissioned specifically for the book. Ferry revised The Buildings of Detroit in 1980, adding the Renaissance Center and other modern works, and this re-released version presents the revised edition adding only a new foreword by John Gallagher. The Buildings of Detroit spans from the early 1700s, when the city was a fur-trading post in the wilderness, to its more contemporary position as the capital of the automotive industry and a major industrial city. Along the way, Ferry offers glimpses of the log cabins of early explorers and soldiers, the Victorian mansions of lumber barons, and the Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills residences of motor magnates. He traces the development of new building techniques that gave rise to the American skyscraper and the modern factory. Ferry details all of downtown's landmark buildings, including many that are no longer standing, and visits fascinating neighborhood structures like movie theaters, hotels, shopping centers, and apartment buildings. In each chapter, readers will meet the visionary architects and clients whose foresight and initiative helped shape the fabric of one of America's great cities. The Buildings of Detroit also includes a selected chronology, maps, references, notes, an extensive index, and 475 illustrations. Previously out of print and difficult to find, this re-released classic will be treasured by Detroit history buffs and architectural historians.
Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit by
Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit by Michael H. Hodges tells the story of the German-Jewish immigrant who rose from poverty to become one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. Kahn's buildings not only define downtown Detroit, but his early car factories for Packard Motor and Ford revolutionized the course of industry and architecture alike. Employing archival sources unavailable to previous biographers, Building the Modern World follows Kahn from his apprenticeship at age thirteen with a prominent Detroit architecture firm to his death. With material gleaned from two significant Kahn archives--the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library and the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution--Hodges paints the most complete picture yet of Kahn's remarkable rise. Special emphasis is devoted to his influence on architectural modernists, his relationship with Henry Ford, his intervention to save the Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts (unreported until now), and his work laying down the industrial backbone for the Soviet Union in 1929-31 as consulting architect for the first Five Year Plan. Kahn's ascent from poverty, his outsized influence on both industry and architecture, and his proximity to epochal world events make his life story a tableau of America's rise to power. Historic photographs as well as striking contemporary shots of Kahn buildings enliven and inform the text. Anyone interested in architecture, architectural history, or the history of Detroit will relish this stunning work.
Designing Detroit: Wirt Rowland and the Rise of Modern American Architecture by
In the early 1900s, Detroit was leading the nation in architectural innovation and designer Wirt Rowland was at the forefront of this advancement, yet few are even aware of his substantial contribution to the evolution of architectural style. It is widely believed that celebrated local architect Albert Kahn designed many of Detroit's structures, such as the General Motors and First National Bank buildings. In fact, while Kahn's efforts were focused on running his highly successful firm, it was Rowland, his chief designer, who was responsible for the appearance and layout of these buildings--an important point in appreciating the contributions of both Kahn and Rowland. During the early twentieth century, Rowland devised a wholly new or "modern" design for buildings, one not reliant on decorative elements copied from architecture of the past. As buildings became more specialized for their intended use, Rowland met the challenge with entirely new design methodologies and a number of improved technologies and materials that subsequently became commonplace. Designing Detroit: Wirt Rowland and the Rise of Modern American Architecture begins with a brief overview of Rowland's early life and career. Author Michael G. Smith goes on to analyze Rowland's achievements in building design and as a leader of Detroit's architectural community throughout both World Wars and the Great Depression. The interdependence of architecture with the city's fluctuating economic prosperity and population growth is explored, illuminating the conditions for good architecture and the arts in general. The author identifies the influence of Jay Hambidge's "dynamic symmetry" in Rowland's work and how it allowed him to employ color as a modern replacement for traditional ornamentation, leading to the revolutionary design of the Union Trust (Guardian) Building, for which he receives nearly unanimous praise in national media. This book is concerned primarily with Rowland's influence on Detroit architecture, but spans beyond his work in Michigan to include the designer's broad reach from New York to Miami. A comprehensive appendix includes extensive lists of Rowland's publications, locations he had designed, and jobs taken on by his firm during his tenure. This book represents new research and insights not previously discussed in either scholarly or general audience texts and will be of interest to casual readers of Detroit history, as well as architecture historians.
Detroit Disassembled by
No longer the Motor City of boom-time industry, the city of Detroit has fallen into an incredible state of dilapidation since the decline of the American auto industry after the Second World War. Today, whole sections of the city resemble a war zone, its once-spectacular architectural grandeur reduced to vacant ruins. In Detroit Disassembled, photographer Andrew Moore records a territory in which the ordinary flow of time-or the forward march of the assembly line-appears to have been thrown spectacularly into reverse. For Moore, who throughout his career has been drawn to all that contradicts or seems to threaten America's postwar self-image (his previous projects include portraits of Cuba and Soviet Russia), Detroit's decline affirms the carnivorousness of our earth, as it seeps into and overruns the buildings of a city that once epitomized humankind's supposed supremacy. In Detroit Disassembled, Moore locates both dignity and tragedy in the city's decline, among post-apocalyptic landscapes of windowless grand hotels, vast barren factory floors, collapsing churches, offices carpeted in velvety moss and entire blocks reclaimed by prairie grass. Beyond their jaw-droppingly content, Moore's photographs inevitably raise the uneasy question of the long-term future of a country in which such extreme degradation can exist unchecked.
DIY Detroit: Making Do In A City Without Services by
For ten years James Robertson walked the twenty-one-mile round-trip from his Detroit home to his factory job; when his story went viral, it brought him an outpouring of attention and support. But what of Robertson's Detroit neighbors, likewise stuck in a blighted city without services as basic as a bus line? What they're left with, after decades of disinvestment and decline, is DIY urbanism--sweeping their own streets, maintaining public parks, planting community gardens, boarding up empty buildings, even acting as real estate agents and landlords for abandoned homes. DIY Detroit describes a phenomenon that, in our times of austerity measures and market-based governance, has become woefully routine as inhabitants of deteriorating cities "domesticate" public services in order to get by. The voices that animate this book humanize Detroit's troubles--from a middle-class African American civic activist drawn back by a crisis of conscience; to a young Latina stay-at-home mom who has never left the city and whose husband works in construction; to a European woman with a mixed-race adopted family and a passion for social reform, who introduces a chicken coop, goat shed, and market garden into the neighborhood. These people show firsthand how living with disinvestment means getting organized to manage public works on a neighborhood scale, helping friends and family members solve logistical problems, and promoting creativity, compassion, and self-direction as an alternative to broken dreams and passive lifestyles. Kimberley Kinder reveals how the efforts of these Detroiters and others like them create new urban logics and transform the expectations residents have about their environments. At the same time she cautions against romanticizing such acts, which are, after all, short-term solutions to a deep and spreading social injustice that demands comprehensive change.
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Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul by
Detroit 67 is the story of Motor City in the year that changed everything. Twelve chapters take you on a turbulent year-long journey through the drama and chaos that ripped through the city in 1967 and tore it apart in personal, political and interracial disputes. It is the story of Motown, the break-up of The Supremes and the damaging disputes at the heart of the most successful African-American music label ever. Set against a backdrop of urban riots, escalating war in Vietnam and police corruption, the book weaves its way through a year when soul music came of age and the underground counterculture flourished. LSD arrived in the city with hallucinogenic power and local guitar band MC5 - self styled holy barbarians of rock - went to war with mainstream America. A summer of street-level rebellion turned Detroit into one of the most notorious cities on earth, known for its unique creativity, its unpredictability and self-lacerating crime rates. The year 1967 ended in social meltdown, rancor and intense legal warfare as the complex threads that held Detroit together finally unraveled.
Detroit Country Music: Mountaineers, Cowboys, and Rockabillies by
The richness of Detroit's music history has by now been well established. We know all about Motown, the MC5, and Iggy and the Stooges. We also know about the important part the Motor City has played in the history of jazz. But there are stories about the music of Detroit that remain untold. One of the lesser known but nonetheless fascinating histories is contained within Detroit's country music roots. At last, Craig Maki and Keith Cady bring to light Detroit's most important country and western and bluegrass stars, such as Chief Redbird, the York Brothers, and Roy Hall. Beyond the individuals, Maki and Cady also map out the labels, radio programs, and performance venues that sustained Detroit's vibrant country and bluegrass music scene. In the process, Detroit Country Music examines how and why the city's growth in the early twentieth century, particularly the southern migration tied to the auto industry, led to this vibrant roots music scene. This is the first book and first resource of any kind to tell the story of Detroit's contributions to country music. Craig Maki and Keith Cady have spent two decades collecting music and images, and visiting veteran musicians to amass more than seventy interviews about country music in Detroit. Just as astounding as the book's revelations are the photographs, most of which have never been published before. Detroit Country Music will be essential reading for music historians, record collectors, roots music fans, and Detroit music aficionados.
Motown: The Golden Years : More Than 100 Rare Photographs by
This new compilation features an A-Z listing and biography of nearly every Motown group since its beginning in 1959. The book also includes never-before-published photographs.
Motown Artist by Artist: A Compilation of the 100 Greatest Motown Artists by
In 1959 Berry Gordy Jr., a high school dropout, former boxer and record store owner, founded the Motown record label in Detroit. The company name, which played on the city's proud tradition of car manufacture, was to become synonymous with great music as Gordy took the sound of black America to the world. Starting with Barrett Strong's Money (That's What I Want), Motown racked up hit after hit, becoming familiar to UK audiences under the name of Tamla Motown and launching the careers of megastars like Diana Ross and The Supremes, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations and the Jackson 5. The 'Motown Sound' was instantly recognizable and unavoidably infectious. As the decades wore on and musician styles changed, Motown moved with the times, launching a myriad of specialist labels and finding new artists to push the boundaries. After a 2005 merger with Universal, the hits kept coming. Motown Artist by Artist relates the history of one of popular music's longest lasting success stories through the stories of the singers and musicians who made the hits. From Ashford & Simpson to Stevie Wonder, every Motown success story is here.
Reveal Your Detroit: An Intimate Look at a Great American City by
Through a unique partnership model with forty-five community organizations, the Detroit Institute of Arts' 2012 community photography project Reveal Your Detroit offered Detroit residents the chance to respond to the Museum's contemporary photography exhibition Detroit Revealed: Photographs 2000-2010. Using disposable cameras, each participant captured people, places, and things that make their lives in Detroit distinctive, inspired by the questions "what does your Detroit look like?" and "how do you want others to see it?". In the final display, over 2,300 images rotated across 60 digital photo frames, from a selection of over 10,000 submitted. For this volume, author Bradford Frost selected 192 images from the exhibit to showcase the perspectives of hundreds of residents and the places they presented, from the gritty to the sublime. Reveal Your Detroit is composed of two main sections--The Authentic City and Detroit's Vital Transformation--photo essays that evoke Detroit's spirited resolve and response to the dominant imagery of the city in decline. Photographers visit favorite Detroit sites like Eastern Market, the Detroit Riverfront, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Comerica Park, Michigan Central Station, and the Fox Theater; but they also highlight lesser known spots, like the cobblestone streets of West Canfield in Midtown, Hostel Detroit in Corktown, and the Central Business District Community Garden Downtown. Photos highlight Detroit's vibrant street and folk art, the diversity of the city's natural environment, and the vitality of residents and businesses in a range of city neighborhoods. The participating community groups are introduced in short text sections throughout the book and credited in the captions of each photo they submitted. Frost concludes with a personal section containing snapshots of a few of his own Detroit highlights. Reveal Your Detroit is not only a beautiful gift book and record of a transforming American city, it is also a testament to the possibilities of creative partnership between grassroots organizations and larger cultural institutions. Anyone with roots in Detroit or an interest in community-based art will appreciate the multilayered picture created by Reveal Your Detroit.
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Art in the Stations: The Detroit People Mover by
The art in the Detroit People Mover stations is a world-class collection with a uniquely Detroit sensibility. When the People Mover, Detroit's elevated transit system, was being planned, the stations were designed simply to serve as basic points of entry and departure, but in 1984 Irene Walt and the Downtown Detroit People Mover Art Commission, a volunteer committee also known as Art in the Stations, undertook the task of incorporating major works by contemporary American artists into the thirteen People Mover stations. As a result Detroit now has one of the most impressive collections of public art in the country. With lush photographs by Balthazar Korab and accompanying narrative, Art in the Stations examines each of the gorgeous works that grace the People Mover stations. The works of ten Michigan artists reference Detroit whenever possible: the mosaic in the Cobo Hall station depicts seven full-scale automobiles; at the Grand Circus Park stop, a bronze life-sized figure reads the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News; the Financial District station is titled "'D' is for Detroit"; and the art in four stations was constructed entirely of Detroit's world-renowned Pewabic pottery tile. A stunning guide through the city's People Mover art installations, Art in the Stations documents Detroit's rich culture and testifies to the perseverance and hard work that made the display of this art possible.
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit by
A landmark publication focusing on both Rivera and Kahlo during a critical year in each of their careers From April 1932 through March 1933, Diego Rivera (1886-1957) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) spent a dramatic and pivotal sojourn in Detroit. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression and amid labor protests in the city, Rivera created his Detroit Industry murals, one of the most important and accomplished works of art made in the United States in the 20th century, for the Detroit Institute of Arts. Kahlo, meanwhile, developed her own artistic identity almost unnoticed, emerging with an oeuvre of extraordinarily expressive work. For this highly anticipated catalogue, Mark Rosenthal and a team of scholars have written essays that examine the artists, the city of Detroit in this period, and the commissioning of the murals by Edsel Ford, the patron, and William Valentiner, then director of the Detroit Institute. Rivera's cartoons for the murals, which have not been exhibited in decades, are highlighted here along with new archival research conducted by Rivera's grandson, Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera. Featuring more than 100 color illustrations of works by both artists, this book presents Detroit as a profoundly important place for the artistic development of Rivera and Kahlo.
Discovering Stained Glass in Detroit by
The Detroit area boasts many fine examples of stained glass representing a variety of periods and styles. The European stained glass collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts ranks amongst the most important in the United States. Churches and synagogues contain panels from notable designers and studios, and exquisite glass can also be found in many public and private buildings like the Detroit Public Library, Cranbrook House, the Guardian Building, and the David Whitney, Jr., house. Discovering Stained Glass in Detroit contains sixty examples of the area's stained glass treasures, each stunningly presented in full color. Author Nola Huse Tutag accompanies each illustration with an explanatory text. Line drawings illustrate the buildings where the panels are located. The windows represent works by designers such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Charles J. Connick, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Matisse, as well as those from European and American studios.
Fading Ads of Detroit by
Across Detroit, fleeting symbols of the past hide in plain sight, behind weeds and under veneers of paint. Demolishing a vacant building among empty storefronts on the west side uncovered the telltale gold and green of a Vernors Ginger Ale sign, preserved almost as vibrantly as the artist intended. In faded red, white and blue, Mac-O-Lac Paint makes an expired pitch to passersby on Gratiot near Eastern Market. On the east side, Mohawk Rock and Rye still declares itself the "World's Finest!" Carhartt, Stroh's and Faygo appear in odd, deserted places. Detroit Free Press journalist Robert Allen sifts through these advertising fossils, exposing the gripping stories connected to the Motor City's historic rises, falls and eccentricities.
Grit, Noise and Revolution: The Birth of Detroit Rock 'n' Roll by
". . . a great blow-by-blow account of an exciting and still-legendary scene." -Marshall Crenshaw From the early days of John Lee Hooker to the heyday of Motown and beyond, Detroit has enjoyed a long reputation as one of the crucibles of American pop music. In Grit, Noise, and Revolution, David Carson turns the spotlight on those hard-rocking, long-haired musicians-influenced by Detroit's R&B heritage-who ultimately helped change the face of rock 'n' roll. Carson tells the story of some of the great garage-inspired, blue-collar Motor City rock 'n' roll bands that exemplified the Detroit rock sound: The MC5, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, SRC, the Bob Seger System, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, and Grand Funk Railroad. An indispensable guide for rock aficionados, Grit, Noise, and Revolution features stories of these groundbreaking groups and is the first book to survey Detroit music of the 1960s and 70s-a pivotal era in rock music history.
Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond by
Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip Hop and Beyond is the first of its kind to capture the full spectrum of Detroit popular music from the early 1900s to the twenty-first century. Readers will find in this unique and stimulating anthology new essays, and a few classics, by widely known and respected music writers, critics, and recording artists who weigh in on their careers and experiences in the Detroit music scene, from rock to jazz and everything in between. With a foreword by the acclaimed rock writer Dave Marsh and iconic photos by Leni Sinclair, the book features such well-known writers as Greil Marcus, Jaan Uhelszki, Al Young, Susan Whitall, Gary Graff, John Sinclair, and many others. Divided into nine sections, the book moves chronologically through the early days of jazz in Detroit, to the rock 'n' roll of the 1960s, and up to today's electronica scene, with so many groundbreaking moments in between. This collection of cohesive essays includes Motown's connection to the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement through its side label, Black Forum Records; Lester Bangs's exemplary piece on Alice Cooper; the story behind the emergence of rap legend Eminem; and Craig Maki's enlightening history on "hillbilly rock" -- just to name a few. With a rich musical tradition to rival Nashville, Detroit serves as the inspiration, backdrop, and playground for some of the most influential music artists of the past century. Heaven Was Detroit captures the essence of the Detroit music scene: the grit, the spark, the desire to tell a story set to the rhythm of the city. Fans of any music genre will find something that speaks to them in the pages of this collection.
Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back by
This is the first-ever historical study across all musical genres in any American metropolis. Detroit in the 1940s-60s was not just "the capital of the twentieth century" for industry and the war effort, but also for the quantity and extremely high quality of its musicians, from jazz to classical to ethnic. The author, a Detroiter from 1943, begins with a reflection of his early life with his family and others, then weaves through the music traffic of all the sectors of a dynamic and volatile city. Looking first at the crucial role of the public schools in fostering talent, Motor City Music surveys the neighborhoods of older European immigrants and of the later huge waves of black and white southerners who migrated to Detroit to serve the auto and defense industries. Jazz stars, polka band leaders, Jewish violinists, and figures like Lily Tomlin emerge in the spotlight. Shaping institutions, from the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers through radio stations and Motown, all deployed music to bring together a city rent by relentless segregation, policing, and spasms of violence. The voices of Detroit's poets, writers, and artists round out the chorus.
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Chrysler's Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit's Coolest Creation by
In 1964, Chrysler gave the world a glimpse of the future. They built a fleet of turbine cars--automobiles with jet engines--and loaned them out to members of the public. The fleet logged over a million miles; the exercise was a raging success. These turbine engines would run on any flammable liquid--tequila, heating oil, Chanel #5, diesel, alcohol, kerosene. If the cars had been mass produced, we might have cars today that do not require petroleum-derived fuels. The engine was also much simpler than the piston engine--it contained one-fifth the number of moving parts and required much less maintenance. The cars had no radiators or fan belts and never needed oil changes.
Yet Chrysler crushed and burned most of the cars two years later; the jet car's brief glory was over. Where did it all go wrong? Controversy still follows the program, and questions about how and why it was killed have never been satisfactorily answered. Steve Lehto has interviewed all the surviving members of the turbine car program--from the metallurgist who created the exotic metals for the interior of the engine to the test driver who drove it at Chrysler's proving grounds for days on end. Lehto takes these first-hand accounts and weaves them into a great story about the coolest car Detroit ever produced.
Driving Detroit : The Quest for Respect in the Motor City by
For most of the twentieth century, Detroit was a symbol of American industrial might, a place of entrepreneurial and technical ingenuity where the latest consumer inventions were made available to everyone through the genius of mass production. Today, Detroit is better known for its dwindling population, moribund automobile industry, and alarmingly high murder rate. In Driving Detroit, author George Galster, a fifth-generation Detroiter and internationally known urbanist, sets out to understand how the city has come to represent both the best and worst of what cities can be, all within the span of a half century. Galster invites the reader to travel with him along the streets and into the soul of this place to grasp fully what drives the Motor City. With a scholar's rigor and a local's perspective, Galster uncovers why metropolitan Detroit's cultural, commercial, and built landscape has been so radically transformed. He shows how geography, local government structure, and social forces created a housing development system that produced sprawl at the fringe and abandonment at the core. Galster argues that this system, in tandem with the region's automotive economic base, has chronically frustrated the population's quest for basic physical, social, and psychological resources. These frustrations, in turn, generated numerous adaptations--distrust, scapegoating, identity politics, segregation, unionization, and jurisdictional fragmentation--that collectively leave Detroit in an uncompetitive and unsustainable position. Partly a self-portrait, in which Detroiters paint their own stories through songs, poems, and oral histories, Driving Detroit offers an intimate, insightful, and perhaps controversial explanation for the stunning contrasts--poverty and plenty, decay and splendor, despair and resilience--that characterize the once mighty city.
Monopoly on Wheels: Henry Ford and the Selden Automobile Patent by
In this classic study of the Selden patent case, author William Greenleaf argues that Ford's defiance of the patent was considered heroic and that his victory in court after a contentious eight-year trade war was historic. Based on Greenleaf's extensive research in the Ford corporate archives, Monopoly on Wheels shows that the real issue at stake in the Selden patent case was the democratization of the automobile as a mass-produced, low-priced commodity as opposed to its former status as the exclusive property of the wealthy elite. Greenleaf shows that the suit was a foundation stone, along with the Model T, mass production methods, and the five-dollar day, upon which Ford's reputation as a rugged individualist was built. Greenleaf also investigates implications that the legal battle had beyond the auto industry for inventions, patents, and technological progress in general. Monopoly on Wheels vividly illustrates how the Selden patent battle became a landmark in the social and technological revolution of the early twentieth century. On the one-hundredth anniversary of the Selden patent case and fifty years after it was first published, this volume will be a welcome addition to any auto historian's library. This reprinted edition also includes a new introduction by David L. Lewis.
Rouge: Pictured in Its Prime : Covering the Years 1917-1940 by
When Ford Motor Company was formed in 1903, its primary assembly plant was a wooden one-story wagon shop, but as the auto manufacturer grew, so did its factories. By 1917, building on his experience with the Piquette and Highland Park plants, Henry Ford began constructing his ultimate vision of an efficient and effective industrial complex on the banks of the Rouge River. In its time, "The Rouge," as Detroiters called it, was the largest integrated automobile factory in the world, with facilities that included an electric power plant, blast furnaces, foundries, coke ovens, open hearth furnaces, a steel mill, stamping plant, engine plant, glass plant, and miles of conveyors bringing manufactured parts to moving assembly lines. The Rouge was able to provide over 100,000 jobs and effectively gave birth to the city of Dearborn. Rouge: Pictured in Its Prime, featuring 389 photographs taken within 45 different departments of the Rouge by Ford photographers from 1918 to 1940, provides a realistic portrait of buildings, machinery, and employees at work during a twenty-two year period. The illustrations were selected from a collection of more than 70,000 Rouge photographs located in the Benson Ford Research Center of Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village. In the accompanying text, Ford R. Bryan chronicles the history of the Rouge plant, from its earliest conception to its future in the twenty-first century. The Rouge dominated an era of industrial progress and this photo story brings the monumental facility to life in stunning fashion.
The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 by
Current political observers castigate organized labor as more interested in winning generous contracts for workers than in fighting for social change. The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism offers a compelling reassessment of labor's place in American politics in the post-World War II era. The United Automobile Workers, Kevin Boyle demonstrates, was deeply involved in the pivotal political struggles of those years, from the fight for full employment to the battle for civil rights, from the anticommunist crusade to the war on poverty." "The UAW engaged in these struggles in an attempt to build a cross-class, multiracial reform coalition that would push American politics beyond liberalism and toward social democracy. The effort was in vain; forced to work within political structures - particularly the postwar Democratic party - that militated against change, the union was unable to fashion the alliance it sought. The UAW's political activism nevertheless suggests a new understanding of labor's place in postwar American politics and of the complex forces that defined liberalism in that period. The book also supplies the first detailed discussion of the impact of the Vietnam War on a major American union and shatters the popular image of organized labor as being hawkish on the war.
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American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company by
THE INSIDE STORY OF THE EPIC TURNAROUND OF FORD MOTOR COMPANY UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF CEO ALAN MULALLY. At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations, transform its lackluster product lineup, and overcome a dysfunctional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses. It was an extraordinary risk, but it was the only way the Ford family America's last great industrial dynasty-could hold on to their company. Mulally and his team pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in business history. As the rest of Detroit collapsed, Ford went from the brink of bankruptcy to being the most profitable automaker in the world. American Icon is the compelling, behind-the-scenes account of that epic turnaround. On the verge of collapse, Ford went outside the auto industry and recruited Mulally-the man who had already saved Boeing from the deathblow of 9/11-to lead a sweeping restructuring of a company that had been unable to overcome decades of mismanagement and denial. Mulally applied the principles he developed at Boeing to streamline Ford's inefficient operations, force its fractious executives to work together as a team, and spark a product renaissance in Dearborn. He also convinced the United Auto Workers to join his fight for the soul of American manufacturing. Bryce Hoffman reveals the untold story of the covert meetings with UAW leaders that led to a game-changing contract, Bill Ford's battle to hold the Ford family together when many were ready to cash in their stock and write off the company, and the secret alliance with Toyota and Honda that helped prop up the American automotive supply base. In one of the great management narratives of our time, Hoffman puts the reader inside the boardroom as Mulally uses his celebrated Business Plan Review meet-ings to drive change and force Ford to deal with the painful realities of the American auto industry. Hoffman was granted unprecedented access to Ford's top executives and top-secret company documents. He spent countless hours with Alan Mulally, Bill Ford, the Ford family, former executives, labor leaders, and company directors. In the bestselling tradition of Too Big to Fail and The Big Short, American Icon is narrative nonfiction at its vivid and colorful best.
American Vanguard: The United Auto Workers During the Reuther Years, 1935-1970 by
The struggles and victories of the UAW form an important chapter in the story of American democracy. American Vanguard is the first and only history of the union available for both general and academic audiences. In this thorough and engaging narrative, John Barnard not only records the controversial issues tackled by the UAW, but also lends them immediacy through details about the workers and their environments, the leaders and the challenges that they faced outside and inside the organization, and the vision that guided many of these activists. Throughout, Barnard traces the UAW's two-fold goal: to create an industrial democracy in the workplace and to pursue a social-democratic agenda in the interest of the public at large. Part one explores the obstacles to the UAW's organization, including tensions between militant reformers and workers who feared for their jobs; ideological differences; racial and ethnic issues; and public attitudes toward unions. By the outbreak of World War II, however, the union had succeeded in redistributing power on the shop floor in its members' favor. Part two follows the union during Walter P. Reuther's presidency (1946-1970). During this time, pioneering contracts brought a new standard of living and income security to the workers, while an effort was made to move America toward a social democracy-which met with mixed results during the civil rights decade. Throughout, Barnard presents balanced interpretations grounded in evidence, while setting the UAW within the context of the history of the U.S. auto industry and national politics.
Disruption in Detroit: Autoworkers and the Elusive Postwar Boom by
It is a bedrock American belief: the 1950s were a golden age of prosperity for autoworkers. Flush with high wages and enjoying the benefits of generous union contracts, these workers became the backbone of a thriving blue-collar middle class. It is also a myth. Daniel J. Clark began by interviewing dozens of former autoworkers in the Detroit area and found a different story--one of economic insecurity caused by frequent layoffs, unrealized contract provisions, and indispensable second jobs. Disruption in Detroit is a vivid portrait of workers and an industry that experienced anything but stable prosperity. As Clark reveals, the myths--whether of rising incomes or hard-nosed union bargaining success--came later. In the 1950s, ordinary autoworkers, union leaders, and auto company executives recognized that although jobs in their industry paid high wages, they were far from steady and often impossible to find.
The Dodge Brothers: The Men, The Motorcars, and The Legacy by
At the start of the Ford Motor Company in 1903, the Dodge Brothers supplied nearly every car part needed by the up-and-coming auto giant. After fifteen years of operating a successful automotive supplier company, much to Ford's advantage, John and Horace Dodge again changed the face of the automotive market in 1914 by introducing their own car. The Dodge Brothers automobile carried on their names even after their untimely deaths in 1920, with the company then remaining in the hands of their widows until its sale in 1925 to New York bankers and subsequent purchase in 1928 by Walter Chrysler. The Dodge nameplate has endured, but despite their achievements and their critical role in the early success of Henry Ford, John and Horace Dodge are usually overlooked in histories of the early automotive industry. Charles K. Hyde's book The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy is the first scholarly study of the Dodge brothers and their company, chronicling their lives--from their childhood in Niles, Michigan, to their long years of learning the machinist's trade in Battle Creek, Port Huron, Detroit, and Windsor, Ontario--and examining their influence on automotive manufacturing and marketing trends in the early part of the twentieth century. Hyde details the brothers' civic contributions to Detroit, their hiring of minorities and women, and their often anonymous charitable contributions to local organizations. Hyde puts the Dodge brothers' lives and accomplishments in perspective by indicating their long-term influence, which has continued long after their deaths. The most complete and accurate resource on John and Horace Dodge available, The Dodge Brothers uses sources that have never before been examined. Its scholarly approach and personal tone make this book appealing for automotive historians as well as car enthusiasts and those interested in Detroit's early development.
Sixty to Zero: An Inside Look at the Collapse of General Motors- and the Detroit Auto Industry by
The collapse of General Motors captured headlines in early 2009, but as Alex Taylor III writes in this in-depth dissection of the automaker's undoing, GM's was a meltdown forty years in the making. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience and insight as an automotive industry reporter, as well as personal relationships with many of the leading players, Taylor reveals the many missteps of GM and its competitors: a refusal to follow market cues and consumer trends; a lack of follow-through on major initiatives; and a history of hesitance, inaction, and failure to learn from mistakes. In the process, he provides lasting lessons for every executive who confronts the challenges of a changing marketplace and global competition. Yet Taylor resists condemning GM's leadership from the privileged view of hindsight. Instead, his account enables the reader to see GM's decline through the eyes of an insider, with the understanding that corporate decision-making at a company as large as General Motors isn't as simple as it may seem. Taylor's book serves as a marvelous case study of one of the United States premier companies, of which every American quite literally now holds a share.
Taken for A Ride: Detroit's Big Three and the Politics of Pollution by
Smog was discovered in L.A. in the 1950s, and scientists showed that the city's burgeoning car population was the cause. Thus began almost 50 years of bobbing and weaving by the Big Three auto makers -- General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler -- to avoid responsibility. As the U.S. government became involved in auto regulation, the Big Three countered with threats, intimidation, and subterfuge. Catalytic converters, alternative fuels, and emissions standards all came about long after they could have as a result of this tug of war. In Taken for a Ride, Jack Doyle documents a sordid tale of delay, missed opportunities, and serious environmental culpability.
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100 Things Lions Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die by
Whether it's for a die-hard booster from the days of Dick Lane or a new supporter of Matthew Stafford, the top facts and activities concerning the Detroit Lions that all fans need to know and do in their lifetime can be found here. Culled by an area journalist of team history from eight decades, the book collects every essential piece of Lions knowledge and trivia, including must-do activities, and ranks them all from 1 to 100. Topics cover everything from who scored the first touchdown in franchise history to the members of the Lions Hall of Fame, and even includes the best place to grab a bite in Detroit before the game. This is a treasury of information that true fans might know about their beloved Lions but will love to reminisce over and a guide that will help new fans get up to snuff.
100 Things Red Wings Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die by
More than just an overview of highlights of a young Steve Yzerman or a remembrance of the team's epic battles with the Colorado Avalanche in the 1990s, this complete guide to the Detroit Red Wings is a collection of every essential piece of Red Wings knowledge and trivia, as well as must-do activities, and ranks them all, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist. From knowing why throwing an octopus onto the ice is a good thing, naming every player who has seen his number retired, or knowing the best place to grab a bite in Detroit before the game, 100 Things Red Wings Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource for true fans of the Detroit Red Wings.
100 Things Tigers Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die by
One of the most storied and fascinating histories in all of Major League Baseball, the Detroit Tigers--an American League charter franchise in 1901--have survived some of the most intense highs and lows of any team in professional sports, and this lively and detailed book explores it all. This guide to all things Tigers covers the 1984 World Series championship and the riots it sparked; controversial "Georgia Peach" Ty Cobb; and crucial information such as important dates, player nicknames, memorable moments, singular achievements, and signature calls. This fully updated edition, which includes details on the Tigers' exciting 2011 playoff run and Miguel Cabrera's historic season as well as the Tigers' acquisition of Prince Fielder, guides fans on numerous of activities to help them celebrate their team in new and deeper ways.
Detroit Red Wings by
One of the National Hockey League's "Original Six," few teams in professional hockey have enjoyed more success than the Detroit Red Wings. In this newly revised edition, Stan "the Hockey Maven" Fischler profiles over fifty of the greatest characters from this unforgettable franchise. Fans can read about everyone from the legendary Gordie Howe (who was almost killed by a body-check that fractured his skull before he went on to become known as "Mr. Hockey") to Nicklas Lindström (who became the first European to win the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2002). With a deft pen, Fischler describes the Red Wings greatest accomplishments from his front-row seat in the press box. Beyond the stats and facts, this veteran sportswriter brings fans off the ice and into the locker room to share a treasure trove of stories and anecdotes from this legendary franchise. Within these pages, fans will taste the adrenaline as the Red Wings rack up 10 Stanley Cup Championships and cheer with the crowd as Pete and Jerry Cusimano toss the first "good luck" octopus onto the ice. Without a doubt, Detroit Red Wings Greatest Moments and Players is a must-have for any Red Wings fan.
Great Detroit Sports Debates by
Any sports fan knows that nothing brings on more passion and opinion than a good old-fashioned debate. Drew Sharp and Terry Foster are no different, as they take on the top debates of all time in Detroit sports.
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The Detroit Tigers: An Illustrated History by
Chronicles the people and events in the history of the Detroit Tigers baseball team and includes quotes and interviews with players and the press as well as original anecdotes about present and past players.
The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community, 1945-1995 by
This study of the Detroit Tigers over a half-century demonstrates how baseball has reflected the fortunes of America's postwar urban society. Patrick Harrigan shows that the declining fortunes of this franchise have been inextricably linked with those of its city and surrounding community. Attention is paid to major on-field exploits, but the focus is on the development of the ball club as a corporate enterprise and its symbiotic relationship with metropolitan Detroit. The Detroit Tigers, established as a club in the nineteenth century, have been an integral part of the community in and around Detroit. At one time, Detroit was even regarded as the best town for baseball in the country. The club has interacted with the city's various communities, but it has also neglected or clashed with some - most notably with the African-American community. The relationship of club and community in Detroit has distinctive features, but it also has much in common with baseball in other metropolises. Harrigan examines the development of baseball's modern institutional and economic structure; the role of major-league teams in large urban centres; the influence of radio and television on the popularity of the game; racial integration; unionization and free agency; and stadium renovation or rebuilding, and the financing of such projects. A declining city population base, the riot of 1967, and alienation between the city, its suburbs, and the state have highlighted the Tigers' own troubled history. The controversy surrounding the building of a new stadium - viewed as the key to revitalizing the downtown core, as well as the team's fortunes - demonstrates that baseball is still a major community concern in Detroit. The Detroit Tigers is the most complete view of the finances of any sports organization yet published. It also illustrates baseball's human dimension. Harrigan has conducted more than a hundred interviews with former players, their wives, team executives, media personalities, sports writers, and politicians and uncovered many previously unused sources to give us a vivid portrayal of a sport and its far-reaching influence.
The Franchise: Building a Winner with the World Champion Detroit Pistons, Basketball's Bad Boys by
The winners of the NBA playoffs for the 1988-89 season were the Detroit Pistons, long a poor-to-mediocre team, but one that had come close to triumph in 1987-88. The story of how the Pistons became champions is told here by the author of The Sweeps , who concentrates on general manager Jack McCloskey but also pays close attention to the other officials, coaches and players involved. The victorious team was put together over a period of years, with the final player added during one of the most unpopular trades in Piston history, when Adrian Dantley was sent away. Stauth attributes McCloskey's success to choosing players with a passion to compete, and to his ability to assemble a squad with the proper balance of youth and experience. This examination of a franchise from top to bottom is conscientious and detailed.
A Place for Summer: A Narrative History of Tiger Stadium by
On April 28, 1896, baseball fans traveled in horse-drawn buggies to watch the Detroit Tigers play their first baseball game at the site on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull Avenues. Starting out as Bennett Park, a wooden facility with trees growing in the outfield, Tiger Stadium has played a central role in the lives of millions of Detroiters and their families for more than a century. During the last century, millions of fans have come to Michigan and Trumbull to watch the Tigers' 7,800 home games, as well as to attend numerous other sporting, social, and civic events, including high school, collegiate, and professional football games, prep and Negro league baseball contests, political rallies, concerts, and boxing and soccer matches. A companion to the narrative history, almost two hundred rare photographs capture the spirit of 140 years of baseball in Detroit. A Place for Summer furnishes a sense of the relationship between the community, its teams, and the various fields, parks, and stadiums that have served as common ground for generations of Detroiters.
The Russian Five: A Story of Espionage, Defection, Bribery, and Courage by
When the Detroit Red Wings were rebooting their franchise after more than two decades of relative futility, they knew the best place to find world-class players who could help turn things around more quickly were conscripted servants behind the Iron Curtain. All they had to do then was make history by drafting them, then figure out how to get them out. That's when the Wings turned to Keith Gave, the newsman whose clandestine mission to Helsinki, Finland, was the first phase of a of a years-long series of secret meetings from posh hotel rooms to remote forests around Europe to orchestrate their unlawful departures from the Soviet Union. One defection created an international incident and made global headlines. Another player faked cancer, thanks to the Wings' extravagant bribes to Russian doctors, including a big American car. Another player who wasn't quite ready to leave yet felt like he was being kidnapped by an unscrupulous agent. Two others were outcast when they stood up publicly against the Soviet regime, winning their freedom to play in the NHL only after years of struggle. They are the Russian Five: Sergei Fedorov, Viacheslav Fetisov, Vladimir Konstantinov, Vyacheslav Kozlov and Igor Larionov. Their individual stories read like pulse-pounding spy novels. The story that unfolded after they were brought together in Detroit by the masterful coach Scotty Bowman is unforgettable. This story includes details never before revealed, and by the man who was there every step of the way -- from the day Detroit drafted its first two Soviets in 1989 until they raised the Stanley Cup in 1997, then took it to Moscow for a victory lap around Red Square and the Kremlin. The Russian Five did more to bridge Russian and American relations than decades of diplomacy and détente between the White House and the Kremlin. This is their story.
Terror in the City of Champions: Murder, Baseball, and the Secret Society That Shocked Depression-Era Detroit by
A New York Times Bestseller Foreword Reviews' INDIEFAB Book of the Year Winner in True Crime Detroit, mid-1930s: In a city abuzz over its unrivaled sports success, gun-loving baseball fan Dayton Dean became ensnared in the nefarious and deadly Black Legion. The secretive, Klan-like group was executing a wicked plan of terror, murdering enemies, flogging associates, and contemplating armed rebellion. The Legion boasted tens of thousands of members across the Midwest, among them politicians and prominent citizens--even, possibly, a beloved athlete. Terror in the City of Champions opens with the arrival of Mickey Cochrane, a fiery baseball star who roused the Great Depression's hardest-hit city by leading the Tigers to the 1934 pennant. A year later he guided the team to its first championship. Within seven months the Lions and Red Wings follow in football and hockey--all while Joe Louis chased boxing's heavyweight crown. Amidst such glory, the Legion's dreadful toll grew unchecked: staged "suicides," bodies dumped along roadsides, high-profile assassination plots. Talkative Dayton Dean's involvement would deepen as heroic Mickey's Cochrane's reputation would rise. But the ballplayer had his own demons, including a close friendship with Harry Bennett, Henry Ford's brutal union buster. Award-winning author Tom Stanton weaves a stunning tale of history, crime, and sports. Richly portraying 1930s America, Terror in the City of Champions features a pageant of colorful figures: iconic athletes, sanctimonious criminals, scheming industrial titans, a bigoted radio priest, a love-smitten celebrity couple, J. Edgar Hoover, and two future presidents, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. It is a rollicking true story set at the confluence of hard luck, hope, victory, and violence.
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Al Kaline : The Biography of a Tigers Icon by
In the Tigers' clubhouse of today, stars Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander, and Curtis Granderson --none of whom were even born when he played in the major leagues--respectfully address him as "Mr. Kaline." Tigers fans around the country of every generation refer to him simply as "Mr. Tiger." For more than a half century, as a superstar ballplayer, television broadcaster, and front office executive, Al Kaline has personified the Detroit Tigers like no one else--including the tempestuous Ty Cobb, Hammerin' Hank Greenberg, beloved Alan Trammell, or steady George Kell--has ever done before. Now, for the first time, the life and career of this remarkable individual are presented in this compelling new biography. Learn how the skinny, shy youngster with a deformed foot and an undying love for the game went straight from high school and the sandlots of Baltimore to the big leagues where, at the age of 20, he became the youngest batting champion in baseball history. That achievement marked the start of a first-ballot Hall of Fame career that would carry him to 3,000 hits and a plaque on the hallowed wall at Cooperstown.
The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman, Detroit, and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights by
In a working life that spanned half a century, Ernie Goodman was one of the nation's preeminent defense attorneys for workers and the militant poor. His remarkable career put him at the center of the struggle for social justice in the twentieth century, from the sit-down strikes of the 1930s to the Red Scare of the 1950s to the freedom struggles, anti-war demonstrations, and ghetto rebellions of the 1960s and 1970s. The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman, Detroit, and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights traces Goodman's journey through these tumultuous events and highlights the many moments when changing perceptions of social justice clashed with legal precedent. Authors Steve Babson, Dave Riddle, and David Elsila tell Goodman's life story, beginning with his formative years as the son of immigrant parents in Detroit's Jewish ghetto, to his early ambitions as a corporate lawyer, and his conversion to socialism and labor law during the Great Depression. From Detroit to Mississippi, Goodman saw police and other officials giving the "color of law" to actions that stifled freedom of speech and nullified the rights of workers and minorities. The authors highlight Goodman's landmark cases in defense of labor and civil rights and examine the complex relationships he developed along the way with individuals like Supreme Court Justice and former Michigan governor Frank Murphy, UAW president Walter Reuther, Detroit mayor Coleman Young, and congressman George Crockett. Drawing from a rich collection of letters, oral histories, court records, and press accounts, the authors re-create the compelling story of Goodman's life. The Color of Law demonstrates that the abuse of power is non-partisan and that individuals who oppose injustice can change the course of events.
Independent Man: The Life of Senator James Couzens by
Couzens was a prominent business man who helped shape Ford Motor Company but he left the company when he and Henry Ford clashed over politics. Upon leaving Ford, Couzens began his career in politics. He first served as Detroit's police commissioner. He went on to a controversial term as mayor of Detroit and then represented Michigan in the U. S. Senate. This book reveals the life of a truly unique and inspirational man.
Roy D. Chapin: The Man Behind the Hudson Motor Car Company by
John Cuthbert Long's Roy D. Chapin is a thorough and detailed biography of a remarkable, but little-known Detroit automobile industry pioneer. Historians should include Roy Dikeman Chapin (February 23, 1880-February 16, 1936) in any listing of significant American auto industry pioneers, along with the Duryea brothers, Ransom E. Olds, Henry Leland, Henry Ford, William C. Durant, and the Dodge brothers. Outside the cloister of automotive historians, Roy Chapin is an unknown. This is in part because no company or car bore his name. Unlike many contemporary auto pioneers, Roy Chapin was a modest man who did not promote himself. Even Long's superb biography of Chapin is not well-known because it was privately printed in 1945 with a small press run. In reprinting this volume, Wayne State University Press is making an important contribution to automotive history.
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Aretha: From These Roots by
America's Queen of Soul recounts the story of her life, from her childhood as a minister's daughter in Detroit to her rise to success, offering insights into the faith and determination that have taken her to the top.
Michigan's Columbus: The Life of Douglass Houghton by
The name "Houghton" is well-known to Michiganians. It graces a city, a county, a lake, waterfalls, schools, and more. But what made Douglass Houghton such a "star?" As the fledgling state's first geologist, he found more than any explorer before him from salt springs to gypsum. His reports helped launch a "rush" to the Keweenaw Peninsula's Copper Country. He also found time to be elected mayor of Detroit and teach at the University of Michigan, all before the age of thirty-six. Here's his story.
The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor by
Lichtenstein's biography of the man whom auto executive, and later GOP politician, George Romney called "the most dangerous man in Detroit" is also a history of the United Auto Workers union, which Walter Reuther helped build and led for two decades, and of the labor movement during a period when great successes laid seeds for later weakness and isolation. Lichtenstein traces Reuther's commitment to the working class to the West Virginia socialism of his German immigrant father; his internationalism owed much to two years he and his brother spent traveling in Germany after the Reichstag fire and working at the Soviet Union's Gorky auto plant. When they returned in 1936, Reuther was elected to the UAW's executive board; he devoted the remaining 30 years of his life to the union. By the late '60s, however, the institution he had built hamstrung him: Reuther knew that unions needed to show solidarity with nonunion workers and attract the energy of a new generation active in the civil rights and antiwar movements, but he was unable to escape institutional constraints. A fascinating biography of a key twentieth-century figure.
The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company by
Skillful journalism and meticulous scholarship are combined in the full-bodied portrait of that enigmatic folk hero, Henry Ford, and of the company he built from scratch. Writing with verve and objectivity, David Lewis focuses on the fame, popularity, and influence of America's most unconventional businessman and traces the history of public relations and advertising within Ford Motor Company and the automobile industry.
