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Once in a great city : a Detroit story / David Maraniss.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York, NY : Simon & Schuster, 2015.Description: xiii, 441 pages, 16 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cmISBN:
  • 9781476748382
  • 1476748381
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 977.4/34 23
Summary: "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"-- Provided by publisher.
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Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Phillipsburg Free Public Library Adult Non-Fiction Adult Non-Fiction 977.434 MAR Available 36748002256610
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

* Winner - Robert F. Kennedy Book Award (2016) *

"Elegiac and richly detailed...[Maraniss] succeeds with authoritative, adrenaline-laced flair...evocative." --Michiko Kakutani for The New York Times

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.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [383]--407) and index.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • Author's Note (p. xi)
  • 1 Gone (p. 1)
  • 2 Ask Not (p. 17)
  • 3 The Show (p. 25)
  • 4 West Grand Boulevard (p. 41)
  • 5 Party Bus (p. 73)
  • 6 Glow (p. 85)
  • 7 Motor City Mad Men (p. 107)
  • 8 The Pitch of His Hum (p. 121)
  • 9 An Important Man (p. 135)
  • 10 Home Juice (p. 153)
  • 11 Eight Lanes Down Woodward (p. 161)
  • 12 Detroit Dreamed First (p. 177)
  • 13 Heat Wave (p. 189)
  • 14 The Vast Magnitude (p. 205)
  • 15 Houses Divided (p. 223)
  • 16 The Spirit of Detroit (p. 247)
  • 17 Smoke Rings (p. 273)
  • 18 Fallen (p. 283)
  • 19 Big Old Waterboats (p. 303)
  • 20 Unfinished Business (p. 309)
  • 21 The Magic Skyway (p. 337)
  • 22 Upward to the Great Society (p. 355)
  • Epilogue: Now and Then (p. 367)
  • Time Line (p. 377)
  • Notes (p. 383)
  • Selected Bibliography (p. 405)
  • Acknowledgments (p. 409)
  • Index (p. 413)

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Once in a Great City Chapter 1 GONE THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER 1962 was unseasonably pleasant in the Detroit area. It was an accommodating day for holiday activity at the Ford Rotunda, where a company of workmen were installing exhibits for the Christmas Fantasy scheduled to open just after Thanksgiving. Not far from a main lobby display of glistening next-model Ford Thunderbirds and Galaxies and Fairlanes and one-of-a-kind custom dream cars, craftsmen were constructing a life-size Nativity scene and a Santa's North Pole workshop surrounded by looping tracks of miniature trains and bountiful bundles of toys. This quintessentially American harmonic convergence of religiosity and consumerism was expected to attract more than three-quarters of a million visitors before the season was out, and for a generation of children it would provide a lifetime memory--walking past the live reindeer Donner and Blitzen, up the long incline toward a merry band of hardworking elves, and finally reaching Santa Claus and his commodious lap. The Ford Rotunda was circular in an automotive manufacturing kind of way. It was shaped like an enormous set of grooved transmission gears, one fitting neatly inside the next, rising first 80 then 90 then 100 then 110 feet, to the equivalent of ten stories. Virtually windowless, with its steel frame and exterior sheath of Indiana limestone, this unusual structure was the creation of Albert Kahn, the prolific architect of Detroit's industrial age. Kahn had designed it for the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago, where Ford's 1934 exhibit hall chronicled the history of transportation from the horse-drawn carriage to the latest Ford V-8. When that Depression-era fair shuttered, workers dismantled the Rotunda and moved it from the south side shore of Lake Michigan to Dearborn, on the southwest rim of Detroit, where it was reconstructed to serve as a showroom and visitors center across from what was then Ford Motor Company's world headquarters. Later two wings were added, one to hold Ford's archives and the other for a theater. In the fullness of the postwar fifties, with the rise of suburbs and two-car garages and urban freeways and the long-distance federal interstate system, millions of Americans paid homage to Detroit's grand motor palace. For a time, the top five tourist attractions in the United States were Niagara Falls, the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, the Smithsonian Institution, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Ford Rotunda. The Rotunda drew more visitors than Yellowstone, Mount Vernon, the Statue of Liberty, or the Washington Monument. Or so the Ford publicists claimed. Chances are you have not heard of it. To appreciate what the Rotunda and its environs signified then to Detroiters, a guide would be useful, and for this occasion Robert C. Ankony fills the role. Ankony (who went on to become an army paratrooper and narcotics squad officer, eventually earning a PhD in sociology from Wayne State University) was fourteen in November 1962, a chronic juvenile delinquent who specialized in torching garages. Desperate to avoid drudgery and boredom, he knew the Rotunda the way a disaffected boy might know it. Along with the Penobscot Building, the tallest skyscraper downtown, the Rotunda was among his favorite places to hang out when he played hooky, something he did as often as possible, including on that late fall Friday morning. "The Highway" is what Ankony and his friends called the area where they lived in the southwest corner of Detroit. The highway was West Vernor, a thoroughfare that ran east through the neighborhood toward Michigan Central Station, the grand old beaux arts train depot, and west into adjacent Dearborn toward Ford's massive River Rouge Complex, another Albert Kahn creation and the epicenter of Ford's manufacturing might. In Detroit Industry, the legendary twenty-seven-panel murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts painted by Diego Rivera and commissioned by Edsel Ford, the founder's son, among the few distinguishable portraits within the scenes of muscular Ford machines and workers is that of Kahn, wearing wire-rim glasses and work overalls. Ankony experienced Detroit industry with all of his senses: the smoke and dust and smells drifted downwind in the direction of his family's house two miles away on Woodmere at the edge of Patton Park. His mother, Ruth, who could see the smokestacks from her rear window, hosed the factory soot off her front porch every day. What others considered a noxious odor the Ankonys and their neighbors would describe as the smell of home. On the morning of November 9, young Bob reported to Wilson Junior High, found another boy who was his frequent collaborator in truancy, and hatched plans for the day. After homeroom, they pushed through the double doors with the horizontal brass panic bars, ran across the school grounds and over a two-foot metal fence, scooted down the back alley, and were free, making their way to West Vernor and out toward Ford country. It was a survival course on the streets, enlivened by the thrill of avoiding the cops. Slater's bakery for day-old doughnuts, claw-shaped with date fillings, three cents apiece. Scrounging curbs and garbage cans for empty soda bottles and turning them in for two cents each. If they had enough pennies, maybe go for a dog at the Coney Island on Vernor. Rounding the curve where Vernor turned to Dix, past the Dearborn Mosque and the Arab storefronts of east Dearborn. ( Ankony's parents were Lebanese and French; he grew up being called a camel jockey and "little A-rab.") Fooling around at the massive slag piles near Eagle Pass. Dipping down into the tunnel leading toward the Rouge, leaning over a walkway railing and urinating on cars passing below, then up past the factory bars, Salamie's and Johnny's, and filching lunches in white cardboard boxes from the ledge of a sandwich shop catering to autoworkers on shift change. Skirting the historic overpass at Miller Road near Rouge's Gate 4, where on an afternoon in late May 1937 Walter Reuther and his fellow union organizers were beaten by Ford security goons, a violent encounter that Ankony's father, who grew up only blocks away, told his family he had witnessed. Gazing in awe at the Rouge plant's fearsomely majestic industrial landscape from the bridge at Rotunda Road, then on to the Rotunda itself, where workmen were everywhere, not only inside installing the Christmas displays but also outside repairing the roof. To Ankony, the Rotunda was a wonderland. No worries about truant officers; every day brought school groups, so few would take notice of two stray boys. With other visitors, including on that day a school group from South Bend, they took in the new car displays and a movie about Henry Ford, then blended in with the crowd for a factory tour that left by bus from the side of the Rotunda over to the Rouge plant, then the largest industrial complex in the United States. Ankony had toured the Rouge often, yet the flow of molten metal, the intricacies of the engine plant, the mechanized perfection of the assembly, all the different-colored car parts coming down the line and matching up, the wonder of raw material going in and a finished product coming out, the reality of scenes depicted in Rivera's murals, thrilled him anew every time. The Rouge itself energized him even as Rivera's famed murals frightened him. The art, more than the place itself, reminded him of the gray, mechanized life of a factory worker "in those dark dungeons" that seemed expected of a working-class Detroit boy and that he so much yearned to avoid. When the Rouge tour ended in early afternoon, Ankony and his pal had had enough of Ford for the day and left for a shoplifting spree at the nearby Montgomery Ward store at the corner of Schaefer Road and Michigan Avenue, across the street from Dearborn's city hall. They were in the basement sporting goods department, checking out ammo and firearms, when they heard a siren outside, then another, a cacophony of wailing fire trucks and screeching police cars. The boys scrambled up and out and saw smoke billowing in the distance. Fire!--and they didn't start it. Fire in the direction of the Rotunda. They raced toward it. Roof repairmen since midmorning had been taking advantage of the fifty-degree weather to waterproof the Rotunda's geodesic dome panels. Using propane heaters, they had been warming a transparent sealant so that it would spray more easily. At around 1 p.m., a heater ignited sealant vapors, sparking a small fire, and though workmen tried to douse the flames with extinguishers they could not keep pace and the fire spread. The South Bend school group had just left the building. Another tour for thirty-five visitors was soon to begin. There was a skeleton staff of eighteen office workers inside; many Rotunda employees were at lunch. A parking lot guard noticed the flames and radioed inside. Alarm bells were sounded, the building was evacuated, the roof repairmen crab-walked to a hatch and scrambled down an inside stairwell, and the Dearborn and Ford fire departments were summoned, their sirens piercing the autumn air, alerting, among others, two truant boys in the Monkey Ward's basement. By the time firefighters reached the Rotunda, the entire roof, made of highly combustible plastic and fiberglass, was ablaze. Two aerial trucks circled around to the rear driveway. From the other side, firefighters and volunteers stretched hoses from Schaefer Road and moved forward cautiously. It was too hot, and the water pressure too limited, to douse the fire with sprays up and over the 110 feet to the roof. The structure's steel frame began to buckle. At 1:56, fire captains ordered their men away from the building, just in time. Robert Dawson, who worked in the Lincoln-Mercury building across the street, looked over and saw a "ball of fire" on the roof but at first no flames below. "Suddenly the roof crashed through. Everything inside turned to flame. Smoke began sifting through the limestone walls. Then, starting at the north corner, the walls crumbled. It was as though you had stacked dominoes and pushed them over." The fire had reached the Christmas displays, fresh and potent kindling, and raged out of control, bright flames now shooting fifty feet into the sky. The entire building collapsed in a shuddering roar, a whirlwind of hurtling limestone and concrete and dust. Excerpted from Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story by David Maraniss All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

During the period 1962-64, Detroit appeared to be on top of the world. Auto production among the Big Three-General Motors (GM), Ford Motor Company, and Chrysler-was strong. Ford planned to roll out the revolutionary Mustang pony car. Berry Gordy and Motown established a fresh sound in the record industry. Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and Police Commissioner George Edwards attempted to make strides on race relations. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an early version of his "I Have a Dream" speech in the city two months prior to the March on Washington. Civic leaders planned to make a bid for Detroit to host the 1968 summer Olympic Games. However, -Maraniss (Rome 1960) points out that serious problems existed. De facto segregation and tense race relations continued. Differences over tactics divided members of the local civil rights movement. Urban renewal decimated long-standing ethnic neighborhoods. Strains in relations between labor and management led to strikes in the auto industry in 1964. And Wayne State University issued a report predicting the rapid drop in the city's population and the movement of white residents from Detroit to its suburbs. The seeds for the decline of a great city were planted. As reader, -Maraniss does an excellent job presenting this saga. VERDICT Recommended for all collections. ["A colorful, detailed history of the rise and ultimate decline of Detroit that will appeal to sociologists, historians, music lovers, and car fans alike": LJ 7/15 review of the S. & S. hc.]-Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. Parkersburg Lib. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Using a combination of historical eyewitness reports and sketches of larger-than-life figures, Pulitzer-winning reporter Maraniss (Barack Obama: The Story) draws a sprawling portrait of Detroit at a pivotal moment when it was "dying and thriving at the same time." Given its current turmoil, it is easy to forget the Detroit that once was. Between the fall of 1962 and the spring of 1964, Detroit was at its peak. It was a front-runner in the bid for the 1968 Summer Olympics; its local civil rights leaders organized the Walk to Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. workshopped his famous "I Have a Dream" speech; Ford Motor Co. released the Mustang; Berry Gordy was honing the soon-to-be famous "Motown sound" on West Grand Boulevard; and Walter Reuther, head of UAW, was guiding labor towards progressive reform. But even in this golden age, all was not well in Detroit. Discriminatory housing practices, intended to prevent minorities from entering the toniest neighborhoods, were exacerbating existing racial tensions, and the city's organized crime could not be cleaned up despite the police commissioner's best efforts. But for all his exhaustive research and evocative scene-setting, Maraniss never seems to find the zeitgeist of the historical moment he covers, the essential spirit that lifted up but ultimately ruined the Motor City. Maps & photos. Agent: Rafe Sagalyn, ICM/Sagalyn. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

Well-known Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Washington Post editor Maraniss explores 18 months in the mid-1960s when Detroit's great achievers and ordinary citizens were very optimistic. Their city was making unique contributions with cars, Motown music, unions, and civil rights. However, the author's self-described "urban biography" notes Detroit also faced growing white flight to suburbs, automobile factory closures and job loss, black-white racial tensions over housing and jobs, and an African American community's poor relations with an overwhelmingly white police force. Maraniss retells well-documented events but adds new insights about a number of them, as well as other lesser-known but important stories. He highlights activities of well-known Detroiters and recounts stories of hundreds of others, from Motown stars to community leaders, mobsters, auto execs and workers, et al. Skillfully weaving into his engaging chronological narrative personal recollections from both famous and regular citizens, Maraniss makes excellent use of his numerous interviews and thorough research in Michigan and national archives, oral history excerpts, and Detroit newspaper quotes. Detailed descriptions of local places will educate even Michiganders. Excellent index and selected bibliography, 34 photos of key personalities, several Detroit maps, and a very useful time line. A well-written, fascinating book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --John Lawrence Revitte, Michigan State University

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Long before Detroit became the poster city for the Rust Belt and urban decay, its leading indicators were already faltering. Maraniss, a native son and a continuing admirer despite the city's travails, chronicles 18 months, from the fall of 1962 to the spring of 1964, to offer a compelling portrait of one of America's most iconic cities. The car guys dominated the economy and the culture of the city, calling the shots on every major decision, deciding the fates of workers and politicos. At the same time, the emerging music scene of Motown gave promise to the aspirations of black Detroiters. It was a time when Detroit was so confident that it was making a bid for the 1968 Summer Olympics. But a report by Wayne State University already foresaw many of the demographic and economic changes that would eventually lead to the decline of Detroit. Maraniss highlights the class and race frictions that demarcated and defined the city and gives readers a glimpse of the colorful life of mobsters and moguls, entertainers and entrepreneurs. Among the famous Detroiters he highlights are Henry Ford II, Lee Iacocca, Berry Gordy Jr., George Romney, and the Reverend C. L. Franklin. Maraniss captures Detroit just as it is both thriving and dying, at the peak of its vibrancy and on the verge of its downfall.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2015 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Hot times in a raucous city. Biographer and Washington Post associate editor Maraniss (Barack Obama: The Story, 2013, etc.) spent only his first six and a half years in Detroit, so he was surprised when he "choked up" after seeing a car commercial extolling the Motor City. That affection inspired this fast-paced, sprawling, copiously detailed look at 18 monthsfrom 1962 to 1964in the city's past. During that time, big things happened in Detroit. Motown burst onto the music scene after the Motortown Revue left the city on a nationwide tour. Ford developed a new car, kept secret except from the prestigious J. Walter Thompson advertising agency; unveiled at the New York World's Fair in 1964, the Mustang became an instant, bestselling hit. Detroit fought fiercely for the 1968 Olympics, but despite support from native son Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee, Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, and Governor George Romney, Detroit lost to Mexico City. Detroit was embroiled in the civil rights movement, as well, with Cavanagh and union head Walter Reuther among many leaders taking a strong stand for racial equality. Reuther even rounded up money to bail out demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, and he never wavered in his commitment to freedom and justice. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an early version of his "I have a dream" speech at the city's much-publicized Walk to Freedom, in which Reuther, Cavanagh, and 100,000 others marched; it was, said one participant, "a model of peaceful protest and racial cooperation" during a time of national unrest. Although overstuffed with facts (for example, that Cavanagh "kept four extra suits, thirteen striped ties," and abundant shirts in his office for a quick change), and sometimes breaching the city's boundaries to become a history of the whole country, Maraniss' brawny narrative evokes a city still "vibrantly alive" and striving for a renaissance. An illuminating history of a golden era in a city desperately seeking to reclaim the glory. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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