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Detroit: An American Autopsy

Charlie LeDuff

3.95 · Rating details · 12,572 ratings · 1,837 reviews

In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age—mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs—Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. A city the size of San Francisco and Manhattan could neat In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age—mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs—Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. A city the size of San Francisco and Manhattan could neatly fit into Detroit’s vacant lots.

In another life, Charlie LeDuff won the Pulitzer Prize reporting for The New York Times. But all that is behind him now, after returning to find his hometown in total freefall. Detroit is where his mother’s flower shop was firebombed; where his sister lost herself to drugs; where his brother works in a factory cleaning Chinese-manufactured screws so they can be repackaged as “Made in America.”

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 neighborhood against systemic arson and bureaucratic corruption. He investigates state senators and career police officials, following the money to discover who benefits from Detroit’s decline. He befriends union organizers, homeless do-gooders, embattled businessmen, and struggling homeowners, all ordinary people holding the city together by sheer determination.

Americans have hoped for decades that Detroit was an exception, an outlier. What LeDuff reveals is that Detroit is, once and for all, America’s city: It led us on the way up, and now it is leading us on the way down. Detroit can no longer be ignored because what happened there is happening out here.

Redemption is thin on the ground in this ghost of a city, but Detroit: An American Autopsy is no hopeless parable. Instead, LeDuff shares a deeply human drama of colossal greed, ignorance, endurance, and courage. Detroit is 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—and a black comic tale of the absurdity of American life in the twenty-first century.
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Hardcover, First Edition (U.S.), 304 pages

Published February 7th 2013 by The Penguin Press

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Mar 02, 2013 Hadrian rated it it was amazing

Shelves: usa, biography-memoir, history, nonfiction, politics-and-foreign-policy, society-culture-anthropology-etc, urban-studies

Here is an elegy for a city, and the funeral oration is delivered by the long-lost son of Raymond Chandler and Hunter S. Thompson.

I have a personal bias towards any stories about Detroit. I was raised in what was once an industrial town in Michigan and grew up among rust. My parents, who worked in medicine, were fortunate enough to still have jobs, as people don't stop dying when they get poorer.

This book hit me. It is not from the journalism as prose-poetry style, although that helps. It is no ...more

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Jul 23, 2013 Rachael rated it did not like it

It was a cold morning; the fog had settled in low over the city and the mood on the street was grim as always. I'd just finished reading the daily rag and was throwing it in the trash when there was a knock at my door.

"Detective, there's a...there's a BOOK here to see you. It says its name is Detroit: An American Autopsy."

"Christ. Send it in, Dolly, and keep your mouth shut about it." Dolly's full, plum-colored lip quivered as she turned to usher in the tome, her ample breast heaving within the ...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Jennifer Oddo rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Detroiters and people who like horror stories

Recommended to Jennifer by: Jeffrey

It's sad how accurate this book is.

Charlie LeDuff isn't just from Detroit, he's an insider. His revelations about many of the stories I heard about on the local news are scary and completely believable.

My only criticism of the book, if I had to give one, is not LeDuff's failure to recognize the "good parts" about Detroit (really, that's not the focus of the book) but rather the unwritten implication that the "white suburbs" stand quietly by, not suffering from what's happened to Detroit. In re It's sad how accurate this book is.

Charlie LeDuff isn't just from Detroit, he's an insider. His revelations about many of the stories I heard about on the local news are scary and completely believable.

My only criticism of the book, if I had to give one, is not LeDuff's failure to recognize the "good parts" about Detroit (really, that's not the focus of the book) but rather the unwritten implication that the "white suburbs" stand quietly by, not suffering from what's happened to Detroit. In reality, we're all suffering in the middle class suburbs. I don't know anyone, including me, who isn't somehow tied into the auto-industry. Detroit's tentacles creep through every bit of Michigan, and when the auto-industry collapsed, the suburbs slowly followed.

By comparison with Detroit, my own living conditions are luxurious. But only by comparison. I make less money now than when I graduated from college, and I still have a student loan or two lurking. Our house is worth $150k less than when we bought it. Every time we go to dinner at a favorite restaurant, we find it closed. The crime is growing. 10 years ago, ours was a safe neighborhood. Now the bank down the street, our bank, has been held up three times in the last 3 years. We have four foreclosed, empty houses on our street and the banks don't maintain them. In the summer, the grass at the house across the street reaches the windows. We take turns mowing the lawn ourselves.

Don't get me wrong, it's paradise compared to the conditions in the wilds of Detroit. It's the American dream for many living below 8 Mile (by the way, I grew up at 8 and Gratiot in East Detroit...now called East Pointe, as if the name change is fooling anyone) but ALL of Michigan is suffering...Detroit is slowly taking over. The "white suburbs" aren't standing by watching...the suburbs are going down with the ship. On this trajectory, pretty soon we'll all be Flint.

I hear the Recession is over. I've heard Detroit is bouncing back. I think that's media spin. Honestly, we were the first in the hole and we'll be the last out. I don't see it getting better here yet, just like I don't see Detroit bouncing back simply because they did some restoration for hosting the Superbowl in 2006 (i.e., sweeping the crap under the rug)or because a few streets around the casinos have been resurfaced. I'm glad Charlie didn't try to imply that it is. He's told it like it is.

The book is very well-written. I expected nothing less of a Pulitzer prize winner. Detroiters should be proud to call Charlie one of our own. Though he is no longer with the Detroit News, as he was during most of the book, he is a prominent figure as an investigative reporter for Fox2 News. I've given up TV for a year (9 months in)...really looking forward to watching the news again and seeing Charlie keeping it real and sticking it to the dirty politicians in May! ...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Carol rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: non-fiction, ebook, read-2013, detroit

WHAT AN EYE OPENER THAT READS LIKE A HORROR STORY!

Whew! So much corruption at all levels of government, local, State, and even Wayne County? I am shocked! Having grown up in a suburb of Detroit and hearing of some of the corruption and hard times via relatives who still reside there over the past years, it never really struck me of how bad it is/was until I read this book.

Of all the horribly sad stories of innocent children dying, homes set on fire for fun, police and fire departments understaff

WHAT AN EYE OPENER THAT READS LIKE A HORROR STORY!

Of all the horribly sad stories of innocent children dying, homes set on fire for fun, police and fire departments understaffed and ill equipped because the politicians and local government ripped off the allotted improvement funds for their own personal gain is appalling, but what is most atrocious of all are the piles of bodies that remain in the morgue because loved ones cannot afford to bury them. I find myself wondering if this really is true. How can this happen in America?

I was a teen in 1967 and remember the night of the Detroit riots well as my boyfriend (whom I married there) was driving me home from a date when we were stopped by a police officer who asked why we were out after curfew and was concerned for our safety. We saw no evidence of any trouble in the downriver area where we lived other than the feel of being in a ghost town that evening.

The book is powerfully written and keeps you wanting to read more, but I have to say I was never afraid growing up there (except when a tornado literally came down our street) and although we were by no means well off, there was always food on the table, we played outside until dark or after, walked to school, stopped at Carter's for a burger where, yes, they had a soda fountain or shopped in the stores on Fort Street. It was great growing up there.

My father worked for Ford Motor Company for 49 years first working on Model T's; then the war came and he made airplanes and tanks. My brother worked there 32 years before he retired to stay home and care for my father who passed away at age 94.

I really did not intend to get so wordy, but my one last thought is how much fun we had back in 2006 when my son and I flew in to Detroit to meet up with my brother (who still lives downriver) to attend a couple Tiger baseball games against St. Louis. We never once felt threatened before, during or after the games and had a great time with all the fans sitting around us regardless of race. (As an aside, don't the Tiger's have one of the higher payrolls in baseball?)

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Apr 07, 2013 Marilyn rated it it was ok

I am a native Detroiter who is still loyal to the city, hoping it will again be a place where families can live a decent life in a cultural metropolitan city. I picked up this book, hoping for some answers on what happened to Detroit. After all, an autopsy promises some answers, a beginning to unraveling a mystery of what happened.

You won't find any of that in this book. The author lays down some anecdotal stories, which while interesting, weren't very fulfilling. At this point, we all know Detr ...more

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Oct 13, 2012 Bill Shea rated it it was amazing

Charlie is a friend, but I say this regardless of that: I enjoyed this book immensely. I read it in bed at night, and it made me want to stay up and read more. Now, that may be because I know these stories and live in Detroit, and know LeDuff, but I think it's also because it's a good read. It's not stifling academic lecturing. It's down in the gutters. A good look at how a prominent journalist does his work, too. My full review is coming out in an upcoming issue of the Columbia Journalism Revie ...more

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Jan 29, 2017 Lyn rated it really liked it

This is a well written and well researched book that is nevertheless depressing as hell.

It’s about Detroit and what a shithole it is, written by a native Detroiter who came home after years to find it worse than when he left.

Journalist Charlie LeDuff’s 2013 novel is about going back to Detroit and describing how this failing American metropolis could be a microcosm of what is wrong with our country as well as the world economy. Painting with a sympathetic but damning brush, LeDuff shows off his This is a well written and well researched book that is nevertheless depressing as hell.

It’s about Detroit and what a shithole it is, written by a native Detroiter who came home after years to find it worse than when he left.

Journalist Charlie LeDuff’s 2013 novel is about going back to Detroit and describing how this failing American metropolis could be a microcosm of what is wrong with our country as well as the world economy. Painting with a sympathetic but damning brush, LeDuff shows off his city in brutal reality – rampant corruption, staggering debt, and infrastructure that is imploding.

LeDuff makes brief mention of the good of the city and spends almost all of his time describing all that is bad. To his credit, and making this book much the better, LeDuff is not just an aloof reporter chronicling a tough city going through a tough time (decades) but his camera is aimed at the portrait – his is an eye that focuses on the individuals and the families that make Detroit what it was, it is and maybe what it can be.

What makes this work is that LeDuff is from Detroit and he is talking about his city. In many asides and sub-plots we learn about Charlie and his family and their proximity to and resonance with Detroit adds another element to this tragedy and makes it a far better and more credible book than it would be otherwise.

Race.

The most pervasive and incendiary aspect of this book, and it seems of Detroit itself, is the issue of race and nowhere is this more evident than in Le Duff himself. In describing his family, we learn that his own family had been a colorful mix of black and white and Native American – finally coalescing into an ancestor taking the ethnic nickname of “Frenchie” and thus getting a coveted “W” on his official papers instead of the earlier labels “N” for negro and “M” for mulatto.

Le Duff’s exhaustive and illustrative discussion of this element made me think of Nazi Germany and that regime’s fastidious distinctions about ethnicity and racial purity. What the hell difference does it make? Especially among Americans – are we not the great melting pot? Are not we supposed to be the people that moved beyond race and the color of skin? According to LeDuff, in Detroit at least, race is still what it’s all about.

Journalism with a heart and soul, LeDuff has given us a glimpse into this once great city.

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Jan 25, 2013 Megan rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, short-form-essays-and-stories

Intrigued by the beginning, but thinking it could really go either way with this one by the time I reach the end... the stories are always interesting, but the journalistic machismo is getting distracting.

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Feb 11, 2013 Walter rated it it was amazing

This is a powerful book, so real as to be too much so at points. Author Charlie LeDuff is unflinching in his portrayal of two stories: his own and that of his hometown, Detroit (to which he returns at mid-career). While LeDuff's life story is intriguing, the tale of the Motor City is almost too fantastic to believe ... and it's in this gritty, unflinching and ultimately loving relaying that the book achieves its glory.

As the author makes clear, Detroit is a window into and reflection of our coll This is a powerful book, so real as to be too much so at points. Author Charlie LeDuff is unflinching in his portrayal of two stories: his own and that of his hometown, Detroit (to which he returns at mid-career). While LeDuff's life story is intriguing, the tale of the Motor City is almost too fantastic to believe ... and it's in this gritty, unflinching and ultimately loving relaying that the book achieves its glory.

As the author makes clear, Detroit is a window into and reflection of our collective soul, an often frightening look at what human nature creates when writ large on a local level with little to no accountability. The SMH-inducing stories are legion, of course, but, to me, even more disappointing and mystifying is the reality that no one seems to be trying to fix it. As LeDuff illustrates in a fascinating vignette in which he follows the money and paper trail with respect to fire department corruption, the work of figuring out what's wrong is challenging but not impossible. The more (if not totally) dismaying part is that, once exposed, no one cares or does anything to correct the problems. It's as if wrong has become the right in this upside down environment and is so 'normal' that it's not worthy of note. Beyond the obvious question of how this could possibly come to be is the more distressing one of why no one is trying to fix it, as well as the consideration of whether this could this happen elsewhere ... because, if so, then all of us - not just those who live "in the 'D'" now or, like me, used to - need to take heed.

Technically speaking, the book is a rush, as LeDuff is both a gritty and gifted writer and an insightful and righteous observer. It's a vivid, evocative page-turner. I laughed, I cried, I shook my head both in disgust and in surprise and experienced a full range of emotions as I traversed the sordid and sacred with the author. Not that the book is perfect - it's clear that there are a few editorial revisions and purposely omitted details that lessen its impact at times - but it's exceedingly good in a bad way: it's so transfixing that the reader will feel compelled to keep reading even though much of what is revealed is at best troubling and at worst inhumane. And yet it's in this revelation of the pathos of the true humanity - which, at times, is so lacking that one almost feels compelled to put the word in quotes - that is its primary contribution.

It's in the unflinching nature of this investigation of the collective id of a fallen and down but not completely out metropolis that hope is engendered. As the author notes, in covering the horrible and shameful, he invariably comes across good people unsure of how to repair their environment. And it's in service to this silent but still concerned minority that the author contributes meaningfully. Unfortunately, the vast majority are cautionary tales, but they're important reminders that, collectively and individually, we get what we settle for....

And yet I will likely never forget the story of Johnny Redding's tragic life and (especially) end. Nor will I ever quite get over the brazen immorality of secondary players - beyond its former hip hop mayor whose malfeasance was chronicled nationally - like former councilwoman and now convict Monica Conyers whose conduct was as embarrassing as it was criminal, the former police brass who fudged crime statistics to their own benefit or the fire department leaders whose indifference to corruption leads repeatedly to death for their colleagues in the field, etc.

So, whether you're a non-fiction fan, a student of current events and/or politics, a Detroit partisan or someone interested in potential glimpses of our collective future - in keeping with the suggestion, early in the book, that Detroit led the country on the way up last century and is now leading again on the way back down in this one - this is a worthy, haunting read. At times, the tales are so outrageous as to seem like fiction ... and yet it's in dealing with the reality that they are distressingly accurate revelations of our human nature that makes them so important to appreciate. In sum, we look away at our peril ... but are greatly enriched if we do not....

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Feb 01, 2013 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: around-the-usa, location-usa-michigan, read2013, biography-memoir

This was a great book that I couldn't put down, as much as you can say a book about a destroyed city is great. What makes it great is the journalist-author Charlie LeDuff, who is from Detroit and has lost several family members to terrible situations there. This makes it different from a detached, paid-to-experience book that most journalists will write, forgotten the minute they are published. This is partly about the city of Detroit, and partly about Charlie's own life and background. The mix This was a great book that I couldn't put down, as much as you can say a book about a destroyed city is great. What makes it great is the journalist-author Charlie LeDuff, who is from Detroit and has lost several family members to terrible situations there. This makes it different from a detached, paid-to-experience book that most journalists will write, forgotten the minute they are published. This is partly about the city of Detroit, and partly about Charlie's own life and background. The mix is great, his writing is great, kind of a combination of old newspaperman and gumshoe detective in tone, with short clipped sentences and metaphors that actually work. In anyone else's hands I'd probably be rolling my eyes, but not here.

On Michigan's place in things:
"Michigan may geographically be one of America's most northern states, but spiritually, it is one of its most southern."

On dealing with complaints that he never writes about the arts:
"But [the arts and good people, etc.] are not supposed to be news. These things are supposed to be normal. And when normal things become the news, the abnormal becomes the norm... What galleries and museums have to do with a dead man is beyond me. Writing about shit like that in the city we were living in seemed equal to writing about the surf conditions while reporting in the Gaza Strip."

On a dead body just being left abandoned:
"The way that members of a society die is a reflection of the way society lives.... So when you walk away from a dead human being, what does that tell you about the state of things?" -Dr. Carl Schmidt, a medical examiner he interviewed for "Frozen in Indifference: Life goes on around body found in vacant warehouse", an article he wrote for the Detroit News in 2009.

Here are a few examples of that writing style:

"He was smoking like wet wool."

"This was like living in Pompeii, except the people weren't covered in ash. We were alive."

"I looked up over the grave and surveyed the heaving sobs of my nieces and the strained faces of my brothers.... Somehow, the city of promise had become a scrap yard of dreams...."

"I stood under the granite cornices of the fire headquarters where a covey of pigeons was huddled against the rain. I roasted up a Winston and thought about things." ...more

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Dec 19, 2013 Nina rated it it was ok

Shelves: memoir-essays, midwest, city-economics

This is the kind of book that you get when some guy, who tells a decent story now and again, and who is often the recipient of a pat "you should really write a book about this someday, you know?" finds himself with time on his hands and decides to make a go of this whole book thing. The result doesn't quite hold together.

It's part Guy Noir (“The strain was showing on Monica Conyers like a cheap cocktail dress”), part anecdotes about how commonplace corruption and violence is in Detroit, part De This is the kind of book that you get when some guy, who tells a decent story now and again, and who is often the recipient of a pat "you should really write a book about this someday, you know?" finds himself with time on his hands and decides to make a go of this whole book thing. The result doesn't quite hold together.

It's part Guy Noir (“The strain was showing on Monica Conyers like a cheap cocktail dress”), part anecdotes about how commonplace corruption and violence is in Detroit, part Detroit 101 (we do the obligatory tourist stops at Cadillac's arrival, the 1805 fire, lumber, Ford, 1967 riots, without LeDuff adding much insight or content), part autobiography... with so much cursing and dialogue that you'd think he was trying his hand at a screenplay for The Wire, Part II: Detroit Edition. Perhaps because he was trying to portray himself as a gritty 1950s black-and-white newspaperman with a trench coat and a cigarette butt dangling out of his mouth, the autobiographical parts really make him sound like an asshole. We get the full dialogue of him getting into a brawl with his wife, being snotty with the cops, getting personalized correspondence from Gov Schwarzenegger (which couldn't have been more name-droppy if he'd tried), getting seduced by corrupt City Council members, being an insider with the good ol' boys down at the precinct and the fire station. Like an old school gangster tale, the storytelling is macho and misogynistic to the extreme.

I really don't know what the book was trying to communicate, other than LeDuff is cool, and has street cred, and Detroit is badass, and LeDuff Was Here 2008-2010. It's not an overview of Detroit's recent politics or corruption scandals - it's too anecdotal. LeDuff discusses only the content which he himself wrote up while working locally as a newspaperman, with no broader overview to provide context.

So, if you want to learn more about Charles LeDuff, or enjoy the crime noir writing style but prefer non-fiction to detective novels, this is the book for you. If you want to learn about Detroit, go elsewhere.

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Feb 01, 2013 Stuart rated it really liked it

I was in Detroit a few months ago doing research at the Ford archives. People were very friendly to me during my entire stay in that down home, I put one pant leg on at a time way that they are in the Midwest. Even wealthy Grosse Pointe types were like this. Someone asked me how often I came to Detroit. "I was last here 34 years ago for my best friend's wedding," I said. "Well, it was a lot better here 34 years ago, that's for sure," he said. "He's damn right," another said who had been eavesdro ...more

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Aug 15, 2018 Patrick Sherriff rated it it was amazing

Shelves: crime-and-such, biography, journailsm

I couldn't put this down. Written as a memoir of two years covering Detroit for the Detroit News, Charlie LeDuff writes like the bastard love child of Raymond Chandler and Hunter S. Thompson brought up in Motor City. You could criticize this as being a highly partial, biased take on what is going on in Detroit, and that would be true: LeDuff is quick to decide who are the good guys and who are the bad and then proceeds to tell it like it is, from his perspective anyway. And why not? Whose perspe ...more

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May 10, 2013 RandomAnthony rated it liked it

I am somewhere between three and four stars for Detroit: An American Autopsy. First off, I must own a oversupply of northern Midwestern pride, and although I've only visited Detroit a couple of times, I feel like an invisible chain links Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, etc. So if you're picking on Detroit you're kind of like picking on my cousin. However, my cousin is in bad shape, no doubt, and he shoots heroin and has lost too much weight and is kind of an asshole. But he's my cousin.

L ...more

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Jan 21, 2017 Ghost of the Library rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-history, nonfiction, library-book, detroit-motor-city

I wont start this with a summary of the book or of the history of Detroit - its been done here, by much more talented people than me.
Suffice to say that, at any given point - as long as you are a car lover/american history nerd - most of the planet will have heard the name Detroit and shuddered without even really knowing why.
The rise and fall of the city has always had a particular appeal to me, its a bit of a rags to riches tale - but in reverse!
In this book what the author proposes is to sh I wont start this with a summary of the book or of the history of Detroit - its been done here, by much more talented people than me.
Suffice to say that, at any given point - as long as you are a car lover/american history nerd - most of the planet will have heard the name Detroit and shuddered without even really knowing why.
The rise and fall of the city has always had a particular appeal to me, its a bit of a rags to riches tale - but in reverse!
In this book what the author proposes is to show just how low the city has fallen but at the same time let us see that there are people who still give a dam and wanna keep fighting - it was a bittersweet read this one...so much lost potential...
I get the impression that this book was both a pleasure and a pain to write - and somewhere along the way the author ended up perhaps making peace with his own past, while dissecting Detroit and its many many problems. He even ends up making some discoveries about his family while sharing the fascinating origins of the city and much of its history with the reader.
This isn't a very elegant book - for lack of a better analogy, he reminds of Anthony Bourdain by the way he writes - clear, raw, in your face, tell it like i see it, don´t care if you´re offended this is what the real world looks like.
Yet, colorful language aside, the love for Detroit is here, right along the many good examples of people who believe its still worth it to keep going.
If you like history, american history, memoirs, or just plain good old fashioned well written pieces of journalism - this is for you. And it wouldn't hurt if you are also a fan of Jack Kerouac because the
chapters can be a fairly chaotic read that takes one back to the master himself.
This one would hardly win the prize for most coherent book out there...however it manages to be surprisingly compelling, making you wanna read just one more page - and it was a fairly quick read once i could devote proper time to it.
All in all, very interesting, very good read and worth your time!
Happy Readings! ...more

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Mar 24, 2014 Steve rated it it was ok

Shelves: journalism, non-fiction

It's OK. Actually, LeDuff is a really good writer, and the pages do fly by, but I couldn't help but feel that on a number of occasions he was so over the top that I thought I was caught in a chapter of Elmore Leonard's City Primeval (a better book, IMHO). Then again, I Googled up images for Detroit, particularly the areas LeDuff writes about, and was shocked at how bad Detroit does look. These areas often look like haunted war zones. If this is the future, we're totally screwed. The book itself ...more

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Aug 12, 2018 Rafal rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: varia-scripta

Nie podobała mi się ta książka. Chociaż momentami jest napisana naprawdę nieźle. Pojedyncze wydarzenia, zjawiska są dość wstrząsające. Ale całość nie stanowi spójnego opisu, który uzasadniałby ten tytuł. To po prostu pojedyncze zdarzenia z życia niezłego dziennikarza.

Do tego tłumaczenie jest naprawdę kiepskie. Jeżeli tłumacz do określenia prezesów wielkich firm motoryzacyjnych używa słowa „kierownicy”, to znaczy, że słabo sobie poradził z tekstem.

Samo wydanie elektroniczne też jest kiepskie. M ...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Nancy Oakes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, favorite

Detroit: An American Autopsy is a combination of gritty reportage and personal memories punctuated with a vein of dark humor that tells the author's story of his attempt to understand what has happened to his city. Detroit is where Charlie LeDuff grew up and after some time away, where he lives now. The book is an uncompromising account of a city that was once the richest in America and the forces, both external and internal, which have led Detroit down a steep path of decline. At the same time, Detroit: An American Autopsy is a combination of gritty reportage and personal memories punctuated with a vein of dark humor that tells the author's story of his attempt to understand what has happened to his city. Detroit is where Charlie LeDuff grew up and after some time away, where he lives now. The book is an uncompromising account of a city that was once the richest in America and the forces, both external and internal, which have led Detroit down a steep path of decline. At the same time, it's also the story of some very resilient people who continue to work and live there despite the challenges they come up against each and every day.

LeDuff opens his prologue with the discovery of a dead man nicknamed Johnnie Dollar found in an abandoned building "encased in at least four feet of ice at the bottom of a defunct elevator shaft..." All that could be seen of him were his feet, covered in white socks and black gym shoes. LeDuff notes that anywhere else, this sight would have been tragic, "mind blowing," but not in Detroit -- and he wonders what has happened while he was gone. He sizes up the situation noting that

"...you come across something like a man frozen in ice and the skeleton of the anatomy of the place reveals it to you.

The neck bone is connected to the billionaire who owns the crumbling building where the man died. The rib bones are connected to the countless minions shuffling through the frostbitten streets burning fires in empty warehouses to stay warm -- and get high. The hip bone is connected to a demoralized police force who couldn't give a shit about digging a dead mope out of an elevator shaft. The thigh bone is connected to the white suburbanites who turn their heads away from the calamity of Detroit, carrying on as though the human suffering were somebody else's problem. And the foot bones -- well, they're sticking out of a block of dirty frozen water, belonging to an unknown man nobody seemed to give a rip about."

And, as he notes, "we're all standing at the edge of that shaft."

LeDuff is a very hands-on, no-fear, outspoken investigative reporter who cares. For example, while tackling the question of what's happened to his city, he embeds himself with a local fire squad struggling to keep up with multiple fires with bad or broken equipment (down to holes in their boots); in one case he discovered that a firefighter's death when a house collapsed was due in part to equipment failure. He also tackles the corruption of the city by following the money and paper trail of misallocated funds and discovers outright theft and an appalling lack of accountability. Worse, when he prints his findings, nobody cares -- there are no investigations, nothing. But imho, the best writing in this book comes from his accounts of the people living in the city: good people who learn to endure, as they are often stuck where they are, unable to leave; others are too poor to afford heat for their families; there are victims of violence whose families can't afford to bury them; he reveals unresponsive ambulance and police services; and his story of a one year-old baby playing in the detritus of an abandoned house just about did me in. These stories are not only sad, but alarming and downright shameful. Including his own family's experiences in the city adds a very personal feel that is also just plain gut wrenching at times.

I loved this book -- I love LeDuff's crazy personality and most of all I like his dogged determination in getting to the root of the problems facing his city. A lot of people talk the talk -- this man walks the walk and reports what he sees in an unflinching manner. At the same time, parts of this very serious book made me laugh out loud. He's definitely got the knack of being serious and entertaining at the same time as he examines why people in many cases don't even have access to the basic services a city should provide. Unlike many reviewers, I don't live in Detroit, nor do I have a connection to it unless you want to count our American-made cars. I chose to read this book for the human story which LeDuff tells and tells well, becoming interested in it some time back when I had read a brief excerpt where LeDuff mentions schoolkids in the city having to supply their own toilet paper, which stuck a chord. A couple of years back I had read a local story about the items people were being asked to supply for their children's school year and I was frankly appalled. Well beyond the crayons, pencils, and the other supplies one might consider normal, also on the list were paper plates, plastic silverware,and toilet paper, and that was right here in the state where I live. I remember telling a friend about this and asking where is all the money going that is allocated for schools? Somehow, things have just gone appallingly wrong. LeDuff is right -- this kind of thing is happening all over. He is a guy worth listening to. ...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Christopher rated it did not like it

Rambling, pointless book by a journalist who became momentarily well-known because of his involvement in a news story about some dead guy in Detroit whose feet were found sticking out of a frozen puddle in an abandoned building. This book is a collection of disconnected vignettes that supposedly illustrate life in Detroit, but they don't add up to much of anything. (A lot of people wander into the book, but none are treated in any depth, and it all seems to be idle stuff dumped out of a reporter ...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Ja rated it it was amazing

Every so often when I am not enraged by the overwhelming bias of NPR, I hear on “Fresh Air” mention of a book that fires my curiosity. “First They Killed My Father” was one of those books. Terry Gross, though, really nailed it with this one. I have rarely enjoyed a book more than this one. If it is even appropriate to say that about a book chronicling the human suffering in a city gone all types of wrong, all varieties of bad. I could hardly put it down. Now, to be fair, urban blight and decline ...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Michael Hicks rated it it was amazing

Shelves: giveaways, favorites

First things first – I was lucky (and honored) enough to win an advanced reading copy through a Goodreads Giveaway. I’ve enjoyed LeDuff’s work on Fox 2 Detroit and had been wanting to read “Detroit: An American Autopsy” since I first heard of its planned publication in a three-part profile on LeDuff that ran on Deadline Detroit.

LeDuff’s on-camera work is polarizing – he’s eccentric, bombastic, assured, confrontational, and sarcastic. He’s a Detroit newsman through and through, but an on-air pers First things first – I was lucky (and honored) enough to win an advanced reading copy through a Goodreads Giveaway. I’ve enjoyed LeDuff’s work on Fox 2 Detroit and had been wanting to read “Detroit: An American Autopsy” since I first heard of its planned publication in a three-part profile on LeDuff that ran on Deadline Detroit.

LeDuff’s on-camera work is polarizing – he’s eccentric, bombastic, assured, confrontational, and sarcastic. He’s a Detroit newsman through and through, but an on-air personality of an entirely different breed than Bill Bonds or Steve Wilson, previous crusaders and champions for a dying city rotted through with corruption. His video segments occasionally strike an almost indie-documentarian chord, infused with ribald, neo-noir sensibilities that are sometimes shot on black-and-white film, and tonal shifts that somehow find balance between outrage and moments of absurdity. His news reports are liberally peppered with opinion and wry humor. He’s interviewed dead men live on air, calls Mayor Dave Bing ‘Do Nothing Dave,’ and takes golf outings through the cavernous ruins of a dilapidated city.

Say what you will about the man or his on-air persona, he is a natural, gifted story-teller. His book, “Detroit: An American Autopsy,” takes a similar sensibility to print and presents the gritty truth of a dying city that its inhabitants and its politicians have spent decades denying. As a novel, it’d fit nicely next to George Pelecanos; if they ever filmed it, it could be the next version of HBO’s “The Wire.” For all the city’s problems, though, LeDuff sees Detroit as a microcosm of larger problems and bigger issues across America. You can laugh at Detroit, he writes, but you’re only laughing at yourself. The city is bankrupt and broken, with whatever is left being scavenged for by looters and destroyers that fancy themselves politicians or millionaires, if not outright thieves and arsonists. The problems of America, like the wealthy fat cat brokers on Wall Street working daily to destroy the middle class in order to line their pockets with more cash, aren’t much different than the problematic people of Detroit. It’s a city that’s been broken and left for dead both by the entirety of its surrounding nation and its own city folk.

He writes about the horrors faced everyday by the Detroit Fire Department, the arsons that flare up around the city because setting fire to some abandoned building is cheaper than going to the movies. A movie theater ticket costs $8, a gallon of gasoline $4, he writes. The emergency responders have broken equipment, which costs one firefighter his life, and busted uniforms that are as much of a fire hazard as the decrepit blazing buildings they work to extinguish. They work in a city so poor that government official stripped the firehouses of their brass poles and sold them to drum up some cash.
He writes about mismanagement of city funds and the scandal surrounding Kwame Kilpatrick, the hip-hop mayor. LeDuff calls the Hip-Hop Mayor a pussy, and he’s not wrong. He writes about the discovery of a homeless man found frozen and buried in ice in the basement of an abandoned warehouse. Surrounding it all is the air of deniability, the refusal of officials to see there’s a problem and who retaliate against any city worker that dare speak out.

The autopsy reveals the horrors and heartbreak of a city that’s fallen over the edge, and may be beyond redemption. At times, LeDuff’s words give the city a post-apocalyptic feel, and, again, he’s not wrong. He writes of long stretches of the city that have been completely abandoned, with wilderness returning to reclaim the land, and neighborhoods where houses are vacant or occupied in checkerboard fashion, some nice, others ruined, like a meth addicts mouth.

Although it’s non-fiction, the events that occur in Detroit on a daily basis are, at times, unreal. The inanity of ex-council woman Monica Conyers, the never-ending corruption and cronyism of the Kilpatrick administration, the blatant theft committed by city officials, the numbers games the police department play in order to lower the city’s murder rate by trying to reclassify homicides to suicides or playing word games over what, exactly a murder is. If two brothers get into a fight, and one stabs the other to death, what is that? LeDuff calls it murder; DPD calls it self-defense, and into the record books it goes.

With the economy in the tank, and unemployment rampant thanks to the failing auto industry, the only thing Detroit produces anymore is misery. Sad as that is, it’s a good business for journalists and readers. “Detroit: An American Autopsy” is a compelling read, both heartbreaking and entertaining in equal measure. As he does on a regular basis for Fox 2 Detroit, LeDuff balances the horror and the humor, underlying it all with the strength of human spirit that defies the daily struggle of life in the D.
...more

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Jul 04, 2013 Anne rated it liked it

Examining the ruins of Detriot is a fashionable pastime these days. I admit, I am interested in the empty, rotting factories and found the documentary "Detropia" fascinating. And I'm a little bit obsessed with Henry Ford at the moment. What a dick!

Detroit: An American Autopsy is extremely thought provoking, although the title was misleading. I thought an autopsy would be a systematic, detailed examination of what went wrong and where the city is now. Instead, it is a series of... well...anecdote Examining the ruins of Detriot is a fashionable pastime these days. I admit, I am interested in the empty, rotting factories and found the documentary "Detropia" fascinating. And I'm a little bit obsessed with Henry Ford at the moment. What a dick!

Detroit: An American Autopsy is extremely thought provoking, although the title was misleading. I thought an autopsy would be a systematic, detailed examination of what went wrong and where the city is now. Instead, it is a series of... well...anecdotes is too light a word. The stories in this book are powerful and sad. LeDuff examines his own history in Detroit as well as the city itself. It touches on the problematic milestones in recent and remote history as a backdrop of people's experiences living in a town riddled with abject poverty, corruption, apathy and greed.

For me, his writing style is too hardened and he paints with too broad of strokes. But these stories are fascinating and I could have kept on reading if the book was four times longer.

As a writer for the Detroit News, LeDuff published a story about a man whose body was found frozen in ice in the bottom of an abandoned elevator shaft. He received some backlash from the community after the article was published.

"The small, white "art community" in Detroit complained that I was focusing on the negative in a city with so much good. What about all the galleries and museums and music? they complained in a flurry of emails-and blogs. What about the good things?
It was a fair point. there are plenty of good people in Detroit. Tens of thousands of them.....community elders trying to make things better, teachers who spend their own money on the classroom, people who mow lawns out of respect for the dead neighbor, parents who raise their children, ministers who help with funeral expenses.
But these things are not supposed to be news. These things are supposed to be normal. And when normal things become the news, the abnormal becomes the norm. And when that happens, you might as well put a fork in it."

I recommend this book but I give it 3 stars because I feel that his world-weary voice and experiences at times overpowered the stories of the people of which he writes. ...more

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Jul 03, 2013 judy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

I have rarely, if ever, read a book so gut wrenching on a personal level. Like many residents or former residents of beautiful Michigan, contacts with Detroit, its people and its problems, run in the background of my life. I must have arrived from the East at just the right moment or perhaps just the moment. The author dates the start of Detroit's demise to some 40 years back. I can't say it was sudden but it certainly was obvious that the downhill slide had begun. Cobo Hall, in its first incarn I have rarely, if ever, read a book so gut wrenching on a personal level. Like many residents or former residents of beautiful Michigan, contacts with Detroit, its people and its problems, run in the background of my life. I must have arrived from the East at just the right moment or perhaps just the moment. The author dates the start of Detroit's demise to some 40 years back. I can't say it was sudden but it certainly was obvious that the downhill slide had begun. Cobo Hall, in its first incarnation, was still the biggest show in town. Great place for state-wide political conventions (and the Auto Show)but you were warned to take care going to and from your hotel or a restaurant to the Hall. Detroit was that kind of place. Coleman Young was still a charming force of nature in the Legislature but soon he would become the first Black mayor of a major American city and start the first of his five terms. Fast forward a few decades and the trouble is obvious. The massive school system, the third largest in the nation, is struggling to keep kids in school and turn out educated students. How is it possible with a corps of elegant, dignified, intelligent and dedicated Ph.D administrators, the products of many city schools could fail so miserably? The picture of the largely vacant, broken down city painted by the author is almost too much to take. It's easier when he focuses on his own life and the people he meets. Sure, it's gangs, corruption, children dying from shots gone astray but you can get that in Chicago and other large cites, not to mention every night on cable. What is different about Detroit is the wholesale abandonment of neighborhoods, factories and shops. Detroit is tough but how do you come back from that? The author doesn't have answers, no one does, but he does have a riveting story told with humor, pathos, unflinching detail. If you didn't know he was a reporter and his stories are real, you would congratulate yourself on picking such such a fascinating, entertaining, hard core read. ...more

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Feb 07, 2017 Mark Hartzer rated it it was amazing

Some people don't like Charlie LeDuff. I don't have any personal knowledge one way or the other, but I do know that he tried to make a difference, and for me, that counts for something.

His name was Johnnie Redding, and his body was found completely encased in ice with just his feet and ankles sticking out "like popsicle sticks". I had not heard of this story, so I actually Googled the story and Jesus, the photo is right there on the internet. He was found in an abandoned, rotting warehouse owne ...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Linda Robinson rated it it was amazing

Topnotch reporting told from the personal view of a journalist who left town for the Big Apple and then returned to the D with his new family. LeDuff peels the veneer to reveal the schizophrenic core of the city: you love her and hate what's happening at the same time, and LeDuff's book is funny and excruciating both as well. Detroit grew up on the car business of the last midcentury, and then aged in the post-industrial world of financial decline. Is it all about the money? No, it's about the m ...more

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Dec 28, 2013 Suzanne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio-book, 2014

First book of 2014 and that was a great way to kick off the new year.

I hate reading reviews of books before I read the book but it can be a necessary evil. In the reviews for this book I gleaned some of the criticism of LeDuff's writing and in the end a lot of turned out to be accurate. But, what some saw as negative aspects of his writing I found to be endearing.

Mind you that I heard the book through the filter of someone else's reading. The reader gave LeDuff a gruff, wizened tone that at ti First book of 2014 and that was a great way to kick off the new year.

I hate reading reviews of books before I read the book but it can be a necessary evil. In the reviews for this book I gleaned some of the criticism of LeDuff's writing and in the end a lot of turned out to be accurate. But, what some saw as negative aspects of his writing I found to be endearing.

Mind you that I heard the book through the filter of someone else's reading. The reader gave LeDuff a gruff, wizened tone that at times sounded like the voice over for an old-timey detective show. "It was August. You could have fried an egg on the sidewalk if the sidewalk hadn't already melted. She blew into my office like an Arctic blast. She was an icy blonde and stacked like an igloo. I was frozen." And, sometimes his writing kind of goes to that place too. Silly or hackneyed metaphors strung together like lights on a Christmas tree. Sorry. I guess we all do that. But for all that, LeDuff's writing betrays an education as bookish as it is streetwise and sardonic. LeDuff has his own patois. Let's leave it at that.

But, ignoring these minor digressions, which is easy to do because you get lost in the stories of Detroit, you find a book that throbs with the rawness of an open wound. LeDuff is criticized for frequently losing the narrative thread of his book but I'm not sure that's fair. It isn't an essay. It is a scattershot of vignettes and memories and opinions from someone who knows where some of the bodies are buried. From someone who has skin in the game because he grew up here. Moved away. And then came back.

Interwoven into the stories of corruption, crime, crack and decay is the story of LeDuff's own family's struggles to keep their heads above water in the blue collar suburbs on the fringes of the city. He's been taken to task for this self-centered patter and that critique makes no sense to me. Because it becomes quickly apparent that his personal losses to the lure of drugs, danger and easy money give him the ability to feel compassion for people that appear to most of us to be immoral and unworthy of our pity as they are the architects of their own destruction. But he sees in them his sister, his niece, his mother. He understands how good people can make bad choices. How bad choices can feel like the only choices if you grow up in a toxin rich environment.

That LeDuff comes from the place he's from and ended up at the University of Michigan and then the New York Times is impressive. I went to school with dozens of Charlie LeDuffs and most of them never went anywhere and are probably there still. I was advised to watch some clips of LeDuff's work for the Fox News affiliate in Detroit and found him to be a slightly manic and wiry terrier of a guy whose delivery borders on unhinged. And, really, you'd have to be a person that scrappy and energetic to do what he's done. So, good for him.

And good for him on his ode to Detroit. I'm not sure I'm convinced that some liberties weren't taken with some personal events for the sake of poetry but I never once doubted that his passion for the people and the place were thoroughly authentic. I never doubted that his despair was honest. And I fully believe in the sincerity of his dedication to either restoring Detroit to its rightful place among the league of Important American Cities or giving it a proper burial and not letting it just smolder and burn itself out leaving nothing but a forgotten heap of ash and a handful of stories.

Edited to add: If you are from the Detroit area the reader's pronunciation of place names will make you crazy. ...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Todd N rated it it was amazing

Shelves: kindle, america-in-decline

Bought this on the strength of a Fresh Air interview with the author and read it in one day.

[[[Aside: I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, about 50 miles south of Detroit. I was always vaguely terrified of the city, probably because several people told me that the city tends to explode into race riots from time to time. My wife and I spent a really fun (and race riot-free) weekend there two years ago doing some typical touristy things (visiting Motown, DIA, a jazz club, etc.), and I highly recommend visit Bought this on the strength of a Fresh Air interview with the author and read it in one day.

[[[Aside: I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, about 50 miles south of Detroit. I was always vaguely terrified of the city, probably because several people told me that the city tends to explode into race riots from time to time. My wife and I spent a really fun (and race riot-free) weekend there two years ago doing some typical touristy things (visiting Motown, DIA, a jazz club, etc.), and I highly recommend visiting the city.]]]

Let's get this out of the way: Technically, anyone who moves from the Midwest to either coast and then back again is a loser. Moving from one coast to the other is regarded as a neutral move. And moving from either coast to a Northwest or Rocky Mountain state can be either neutral or aspirational, depending on how it is positioned. Exceptions are sometimes granted for graduate school or dying parents, though going from laid off to graduate school, regardless of location, automatically confers loser status.

So Mr. LeDuff is a loser because he grew up outside Detroit, had a schmancy New York Times job writing about odd ball characters, and then returned to the Detroit area mid-career. His series actually won several awards, but the chinless bastards of the New York Times referred to his subjects as "losers," and not in a nice way. As a result Mr. LeDuff's heart was no longer into his job, and he moved back to Detroit.

And I'm really glad that he did because as a result I got to read this book. Detroit is a target-rich environment for an enterprising journalist who cares more about the truth than his reputation, and Mr. LeDuff makes the most of it. Check out his videos on YouTube for a quick sense of his goofy sensibility. The vibe is sort of an HL Mencken meets Michael Moore with a little Rivethead mental illness on top like paprika.

Mixed in with the appalling chicanery of Detroit politics are highly personal stories of his family and how they have coped with the decline of Detroit. (Spoiler: not always so well.) One brother goes from hawking subprime mortgages for Quicken Loans to working in a screw factory (where screws from China are repackaged so that they can labeled "Made In America").

The graffiti in the bathroom of the screw factory points to the root cause of America's decline -- and bear in mind that Detroit's decline is just a more media friendly version of America's overall decline -- "F**K HARD WORKERS."

This book documents very well the mendacious poltroons (to borrow just two of Mencken's favorite words) that have been running Detroit. It's as if the city's corrupt political machine either didn't get the memo that there is no money left in the city or was to lazy to bother changing their tactics. I'll bet this is going on in most other cities in the Midwest, especially Chicago, but they aren't quite as bad off as Detroit so it's not as obvious. Especially heartbreaking is the insufficient budget of the local fire department compared with the money that supposedly went to them but was instead diverted into no-bid contracts to friends and family of those in power. You know where it is heading, but you don't want to believe it.

Now that an emergency manager has been appointed by the governor to take care of the city (and potentially override the political will of its citizens), I would very much like to read a sequel or at least a few jottings of his impressions of what goes down next. ...more

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Mar 01, 2015 Scott rated it did not like it

I think that Charlie LeDuff is a journalistic Raymond Chandler, a 21st century Hunter S. Thompson. He's a working class stiff who tells it like it is, without all that intellectual bullshit that passes for writing these days. He got tired of winning Pulitzer Prizes and working for the Gray Lady in the cittay and decided to get on back to his roots in Detroit, where his honest, hardscrabble family still lives. This book, then, is an attempt to get at the heart of what ails Detroit, the heart of A I think that Charlie LeDuff is a journalistic Raymond Chandler, a 21st century Hunter S. Thompson. He's a working class stiff who tells it like it is, without all that intellectual bullshit that passes for writing these days. He got tired of winning Pulitzer Prizes and working for the Gray Lady in the cittay and decided to get on back to his roots in Detroit, where his honest, hardscrabble family still lives. This book, then, is an attempt to get at the heart of what ails Detroit, the heart of America, the hearts of all Americans, all the average Joes out there who clock in and clock out, who put in an honest days' work for a less-than-honest days' pay but don't have the power or the free time to bitch about it. It's about...

OK, fuck it. I can't go on. LeDuff is an assclown. His writing style is - essentially - to slather one tough-guy cliche on top of another, until the reader is too overwhelmed to notice that LeDuff has NOTHING NEW, PERTINENT OR SUBSTANTIAL TO SAY. Like anyone who tries to write anything, he reveals more about himself than he realizes... But in his case, what he reveals is his posturing, his posing, his fundamental dishonesty and lack of insight.

If he were a high school kid, I might pat him on the back and encourage him to take another crack at it - but first, to think about what he wants to say. To maybe, I dunno, jot down some notes about the important points he'd like to make. And perhaps to visit a library. Or maybe arrange an interview with someone who knows something about, I dunno, economics... Or business... God, anything, really.

But he's not a high school kid, and as far as I can see he has done nothing to deserve me giving him the benefit of the doubt about anything. He has published an over-praised, sloppily slapped together amalgam of disjointed vignettes. If there is a common thread, it is not Detroit or its downfall but rather Mr. LeDuff, presenting himself in each tableau like Philip Marlowe, jaded gumshoe, with sleazy thugs and slutty molls attempting to corrupt him...

I fucking hated this book. ...more

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May 03, 2013 Bryan Alexander rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, politics

This is a furious book, a snarling love song to a suffering people.

This is not one of those "please say nice things about Detroit" screeds. LeDuff focuses on horror, mayhem, dysfunction, corruption, and despair. Victories are rare and small, scored in the face of general decline.

Which is not to say _Detroit: An American Autopsy_ is not a pleasure to read. The prose is elegant, stripped down in a hurry, and focused on economically outlining key details. Characters appear vividly, either as one-ti ...more

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May 28, 2013 John Devlin rated it it was ok

(2.8)A little too much filler from his life and the meanderings of his sojourn through the rusted out hulk that was Detroit.

People should read this and know that this is the paradigm of what happens when Progressive politics and years of race-baiting victimization crash headlong into government entitlements married to a 21st century that has steamrolled manufacturing.

The government isn't corrupt b/c that implies there's something clean and pure that can be found if the rust is chipped away. In f ...more

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About Charlie LeDuff

Charlie LeDuff

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Charlie LeDuff is a writer, filmmaker and a multimedia reporter for The Detroit News. He is a former national correspondent for The New York Times.

He covered the war in Iraq, crossed the desert with a group of migrant Mexicans and worked inside a North Carolina slaughterhouse as part of The Times series “How Race Is Lived in America,” which was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for National Reportin ...more