Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story

including a brilliant biography of Vince Lombardi

Even though I have never lived there, I feel a connection with Detroit. My father was born and raised there, I still have some family there,and I was there a few times as a child in what were still the city's glory days. I saw a game at Tiger Stadium, toured a Ford factory (very hot and noisy) and saw a vibrant, dynamic downtown. More than that, as a history buff, Detroit has always fascinated me as, first, the Arsenal of Democracy during World War II, then the engine (no pun intended) of American prosperity during the Cold War, and, finally and sadly, of course, the ultimate symbol of American urban decline. David Maraniss was a reporter for the Washington Post and has written a number of other books, including a brilliant biography of Vince Lombardi, which I highly recommend. He was born in Detroit although his family moved when he was young. I think this is a great book. The book covers the time period roughly from late 1962 to late 1964, with the emphasis being on 1963, a time when America was truly on top of the world although cracks were beginning to show. Detroit was at its height; the country as a whole was prosperous, the car industry was booming, and no one, I'm sure, could possibly have imagined a time when Japanese cars would be a serious threat to the Ford, Chrysler, and GM. Detroit was a vibrant, dynamic city which, in fact, even bid on the 1968 Summer Olympics, a fact which astonished me; indeed, Detroit was selected over Los Angeles as the American bidder for the games. (The Games eventually went to Mexico City.) It's simply incredibly today to think about Detroit as being a serious competitor for the Olympics. But that's what Detroit was in 1963. And the auto industry helped to create a solid middle class African-American community which, ultimately, fueled the growth of Motown, probably one of, if not the, first large-scale African-American enterprises. The auto industry, despite the racism of many union members (and, yes, they were racists), en...