Detroit

A Biography

By: Scott Martelle

Narrated by: William Hughes

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: A Biography by journalist and author Scott Martelle is about a city that rose because of the most American of traits - innovation, entrepreneurship, and an inspiring perseverance. It’s about the object lessons learned from the city’s collapse, and, most prosaically, it’s about what happens when a nation turns its back on its own citizens.

The 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. The tragic story truly is a biography, for the city is nothing without its people.

Scott Martelle is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer and author of three books of nonfiction. He has covered three presidential campaigns as well as postwar reporting from Kosovo. He is the cofounder of the Journalism Shop, a book critic, and an active blogger. He lives with his wife and children in California.

©2012 Scott Martelle (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Former Detroit News reporter Martelle vividly recounts the rise and downfall of a once-great city…An informative albeit depressing glimpse of the workings of a once-great city that is now a shell of its former self.” ( Publishers Weekly)

“ Blood Passion is the definitive account of a major landmark in the American struggle for social justice. And the way Scott Martelle tells the story is splendid proof that history can both be written as vividly as a novel and also be documented with scrupulous care.” (Adam Hochschild, New York Times best-selling author on Blood Passion)

“Martelle’s excellent book captures [the Ludlow Massacre] with a journalist’s flair for narrative and a historian’s penchant for making the necessary inferences where they belong: on the page for all to see.” ( San Francisco Chronicle)

Racism Corruption

I liked the history and birth of this city. I did not like the systemic racism that this city has in it.

Lessons from "Detroit: A Biography"

What would Detroit look like today if the University of Michigan had not moved from the city (after the university's founding in 1817) to Ann Arbor in 1837? Imagine what U of M's $8 billion endowment and 40,000 students would mean to the city today?

Would having a flagship research university in Detroit have allowed the city to follow a path closer to that of Pittsburgh, another formerly one industry town (steel instead of autos) that re-invented itself to a center of ED'S, MED'S, and FINANCE?

These and other questions are pondered in Scott Martelle's wonderful new book, Detroit: A Biography.

We keep reading about how it is cities that drive our economy by spurring innovation. Matt Ridely, in The Rational Optimist, talks about cities as places where "ideas go to have sex." Readers of Ed Glaeser's Triumph of the City know that the world's future is an urban future, and that more people will move to cities in the 21st century than at any time in the history of the world.

The sub-title of Glaeser's book is "How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier." How then to explain Detroit?

Martelle, a long time Detroit resident and reporter (he currently lives in California) sets out to explain how Detroit went from one of our wealthier cities (with amongst the highest median incomes and highest rates of home ownership in the 1950s) to a place over one-third of residents live below the poverty line. What caused the greatest urban population crash in modern memory, with the number of Detroit city residents dropping from 1.85 million in 1950 to just over 700,000 today?

What can we learn from the story of Detroit? And is there a future for the Motor City? Martelle is stronger on the former question than the latter. He is articulate about the decisions the people of Detroit should have made to build on the city's industrial foundations. He is less certain about what Detroit can do now to turn things around.

Martelle ascribes the reasons for Detroit's fall primarily to the short-sighted and greedy decision making of the cities former elites. Rather than invest in industries outside of automobiles, politicians and corporate executives continuously doubled-down on cars. There is no Ford or G.M. University in Detroit. No Chrysler College. The failure to diversify is a lesson that other single industry towns should learn well.

Detroit: A Biography is an important addition to the growing literature on urbanism and innovation - and should be read by anyone thinking about which policies will be most effective in growing the U.S. economy in the 21st century.

Biased Review of Detroit

The author is quick to dismiss the reasoning for Detroit’s demise. Of course it had nothing to do with the corruption, high taxes, and over regulation of the city, making it impossible to start or maintain businesses in the city.

There are plenty of educated black and white families who would move back to Detroit. You’d have to attract developers to build gated communities with their own security. Block by block, you could build secure communities, so you could start refurbishing historic neighborhoods,

A good early history

Beginning was great but the WW2 period to present is a bit cliche. The decentralization of industry by the government was unique good info.

Excellent biography of my home city

I learned a lot about the forces that forged Detroit into a powerhouse and the forces that lead Detroit into near ruins. I lived through some of the story and know how well the author captures the people on the ground of late 20th century Detroit. In the end I learned how and why life in Detroit in the 70's and & 80's was so hard. Highly recommended by a native