Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff is a fascinating and incredibly disturbing look at the dysfunction that is Detroit. Living in Michigan, I already had a pretty good sense of how broken - and broke - the city is. After all, the city made news several yeas ago by asking schoolchildren to bring their own toilet paper to school, since the district couldn't afford it anymore. And then there is the Kwame Kilpatrick sideshow: enough said. For anyone who hasn't become familiar with the downfall of one of the nation's formerly great cities, LeDuff does a great job of breaking down the problems that have plagued the city since...the 70s? The 60s? The 1860s? Obviously there's no shortage of material here.
All-in-all, I thought the first half of the book was stronger than the second, which delves more into LeDuff's personal history and feels more like a memoir than an exposé. This is a pretty quick read and well worth the time for anyone who wants to begin to understand how so much can go so wrong and whether the same thing might happen to other great cities down the road.
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