3.5
Once in a Great City
ByPublisher Description
“A fascinating political, racial, economic, and cultural tapestry” (Detroit Free Press), Once in a Great City is a tour de force from David Maraniss about the quintessential American city at the top of its game: Detroit in 1963.
Detroit in 1963 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; Motown’s founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the incredible Aretha; Governor George Romney, Mormon and Civil Rights advocate; car salesman Lee Iacocca; Police Commissioner George Edwards; Martin Luther King. The time was full of promise. The Detroit auto industry was selling more cars than ever before. Yet the shadows of collapse were evident even then as urban decline and racial tension simmered beneath the surface.
“Elegiac and richly detailed” (The New York Times), in Once in a Great City David Maraniss shows that 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 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 economy and by the transfer of American prosperity to the information and service industries. In 1963, as Maraniss captures it with power and affection, Detroit summed up the American Dream of prosperity that was already past history. “An encyclopedic account of Detroit in the early sixties, a kind of hymn to what really was a great city” (The New Yorker).
Detroit in 1963 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; Motown’s founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the incredible Aretha; Governor George Romney, Mormon and Civil Rights advocate; car salesman Lee Iacocca; Police Commissioner George Edwards; Martin Luther King. The time was full of promise. The Detroit auto industry was selling more cars than ever before. Yet the shadows of collapse were evident even then as urban decline and racial tension simmered beneath the surface.
“Elegiac and richly detailed” (The New York Times), in Once in a Great City David Maraniss shows that 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 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 economy and by the transfer of American prosperity to the information and service industries. In 1963, as Maraniss captures it with power and affection, Detroit summed up the American Dream of prosperity that was already past history. “An encyclopedic account of Detroit in the early sixties, a kind of hymn to what really was a great city” (The New Yorker).
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesOnce in a Great City Reviews
3.5
“The Big Three. The Ford family. The introduction of the Ford Mustang. Lee Iaccoca and his pursuit of the DeLorean. Motown. Berry Gordy. Little Stevie Wonder. Diana Ross. MLK. JFK. Bid for the 1968 Olympics. Civil rights rioting. The mob. Mitt Romney's dad as governor.
This book covers a bustling time in about very small window of the early 60s in Detroit. Chapters alternated the above subjects in great detail.
Also - JFK... BLOWN AWAY... WHAT ELSE DID BILLY JOEL HAVE TO SAAAAAY???”
About David Maraniss
David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s—Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History).
Other books by David Maraniss
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