Well-written, even-handed description of What Is Wrong with Detroit. Some chapters are a little cultural-touristy, others a little sentimental, and the information is only current through the 1989 mayoral election. That said, history is history, and this book should be required reading in every high school in metro Detroit. As a native Grosse Pointer, I'm a little ashamed that some of the content of this book was news to me in my mid-twenties. The author grew up in Pontiac and approaches the tensions in Detroit--racial, economic, cultural--as both an outsider and an insider; he has the sophistication of a writer-anthropologist, but the diligence of his study is fueled by the fierce loyalty of a man trying to understand and protect his childhood home. His perspective is authentically suburban, and he takes this unique opportunity to ask the questions we all want to ask of the people who should have had the best answers. ( )

I was not sure what kind of book this was going to be, only to discover it is a bit of a shape-shifter. Largely based on interviews and journalistic reporting, turned into a story-line, perhaps best characterised as a documentary in words. Well-written, and sufficiently avoiding the "journalistic style" which turns every person into a cartoon character magnifying supposedly characteristic features (you know, the street artists who will sketch you in five minutes).

No matter how much is written about a country in the newspapers, it is hard to really grasp the reality of life if you have never been there. I know virtually nothing about Japan, and barely much more about the US. Devil's Night, and other true tales of Detroit came as a real eye opener, a view on developments in an American city that are shocking and startling ( )