When we think of Detroit we think first of the auto industry and its slow painful decline then maybe the sounds of Motown or the long line of professional sports successes But economies are made up of people and the effect of the economic downfall of Detroit is one of the most compelling stories in America
Detroit Biography by journalist and author Scott Martelle is about a city that rose because of the most American of traitsand#8212;innovation entrepreneurship and an inspiring perseverance Its about the object lessons learned from the citys collapse and most prosaically its about what happens when a nation turns its back on its own citizens
story of Detroit encompasses compelling human dimensions from the hope it once posed for blacks fleeing slavery in the early 1800s and then rural Southern poverty in the 1920s to the American Dream it represented for waves of European immigrants eager to work in factories bearing the names Ford Chrysler and Chevrolet Martelle clearly encapsulates an entire city past and present through the lives of generations of individual citizens tragic story truly is a biography for the city is nothing without its people