“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.
0 有用 Gincredible 2018-07-05 09:51:06
在社里审稿;很好读;民权
0 有用 坏猪的坏_开心的 2017-02-13 13:43:21
在1964年为努力建设伟大社会而不懈奋斗的演讲中,LBJ说底特律是大美希望的引路人。尽管当时三大汽车公司捷报频传,但是种族矛盾的加剧最终导致底特律的衰落。宗教纷争、种族矛盾、政见不合、地区歧视依旧此起彼伏的今天,大城市在因熔炉而发展的同时,只怕也同时埋下了不免衰败的火苗吧。
0 有用 Gincredible 2018-07-05 09:51:06
在社里审稿;很好读;民权
0 有用 坏猪的坏_开心的 2017-02-13 13:43:21
在1964年为努力建设伟大社会而不懈奋斗的演讲中,LBJ说底特律是大美希望的引路人。尽管当时三大汽车公司捷报频传,但是种族矛盾的加剧最终导致底特律的衰落。宗教纷争、种族矛盾、政见不合、地区歧视依旧此起彼伏的今天,大城市在因熔炉而发展的同时,只怕也同时埋下了不免衰败的火苗吧。