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Detroit: An American Autopsy

Detroit: An American Autopsy

Detroit: An American Autopsy
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Detroit: An American Autopsy

by LeDuff, Charlie

  • Used
  • very good
  • Hardcover
Condition
Very Good
ISBN 10
1594205345
ISBN 13
9781594205347
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About This Item

Penguin Press, 2013-02-07. Hardcover. Very Good. Minor wear, mostly around the edges. No markings noted.. Unconditional money back guarantee.

Synopsis

A New York Times Bestseller “A book full of both literary grace and hard-won world-weariness... Iggy Pop meets Jim Carroll and Charles Bukowski” – Kirkus , STARRED REVIEW Back in his broken hometown, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charlie LeDuff searches through the ruins for clues to its fate, his family’s, and his own. Detroit is where his mother’s flower shop was firebombed in the pre-Halloween orgy of arson known as Devil’s Night; where his sister lost herself to the west side streets; where his brother, who once sold subprime mortgages with skill and silk, now works in a factory cleaning Chinese-manufactured screws so they can be repackaged as “May Be Made in United States.” Having led us on the way up, Detroit now seems to be leading us on the way down. Once the richest city in America, Detroit is now the nation’s poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age—mass production, blue-collar jobs, and automobiles—Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, dropouts, and foreclosures. It is an eerie and angry place of deserted factories and abandoned homes and forgotten people. Trees and switchgrass and wild animals have come back to reclaim their right¬ful places. Coyotes are here. The pigeons have left. A city the size of San Francisco and Manhattan could neatly fit into Detroit’s vacant lots. After revealing that the city’s murder rate is higher than the official police number—making it the highest in the country—a weary old detective tells LeDuff, “In this city two plus two equals three.” With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation only a native son possesses, LeDuff sets out to uncover what destroyed his city. He embeds with a local fire brigade struggling to defend its city against systemic arson and bureaucratic corruption. He investigates politicians of all stripes, from the smooth-talking mayor to career police officials to ministers of the backstreets, following the paperwork to discover who benefits from Detroit’s decline. He beats on the doors of union bosses and homeless squatters, powerful businessmen and struggling homeowners, and the ordinary people holding the city together by sheer determination. If Detroit is America’s vanguard in good times and bad, then here is the only place to turn for guid¬ance in our troubled era. While redemption is thin on the ground in this ghost of a city, Detroit: An American Autopsy is no hopeless parable. LeDuff shares an unbelievable story of a hard town in a rough time filled with some of the strangest and strongest people our country has to offer. Detroit is a dark comedy of the absurdity of American life in the twenty-first century, a deeply human drama of colossal greed and endurance, ignorance and courage.

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Details

Bookseller
TangledWebMysteries US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
097429
Title
Detroit: An American Autopsy
Author
LeDuff, Charlie
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Very Good
Quantity Available
1
ISBN 10
1594205345
ISBN 13
9781594205347
Publisher
Penguin Press
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
2013-02-07
X weight
22 oz

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About the Seller

TangledWebMysteries

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2004
Kennebunkport, Maine

About TangledWebMysteries

Tangled Web Mysteries and Oddities was started in 1995 as a bookstore in downtown historic Salem, MA, and is now based in beautiful Kennebunkport, Maine. We are a Mother and Daughter run business, and have been selling online since 2001. We specialize in hard to find mystery series, children's books, and other collectible and hard to find titles.

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