The buildings of Detroit

This chapter provides some context on the city of Detroit, New Deal labor, and the Communist Party. In the 1940s, Detroit was a boomtown confronted with enormous social and politic...

Chapter 4 examines Detroit as US capitalism’s putative post-industrial phoenix between 2011 and 2016: both a blank slate and an emerging comeback story. The chapter analyzes key na...

This chapter focuses on Detroit’s Jewish community, first taking up its complex, many-layered internal musical life, from religious to politically radical, across a range of initia...

When Sheila Jordan dropped a nickel in the juke box of a Detroit diner in the 1940s and heard “Now’s The Time” by Charlie Parker, she was instantly hooked—and so began a seventy-ye...

From the prison cage to the batting cage, Ron LeFlore’s journey to the major leagues was anything but ordinary. When twenty-three-year-old Ron LeFlore played his ...

Detroit became a symbol of the economic freefall, and its ruins, deserted factories, abandoned houses, were a harbinger of the end of capitalism and a sign of “urban death.” Organi...