Occupation: Journalist Birth: 1949
Well, there were several things. One was that the industry itself built in Detroit was abandoning the city - taking factories elsewhere, the corporat….
It is?classic Bill Clinton, sincere and deceptive at the same time, requiring a careful reading between the lines..
Natural politicians are skilled actors, recreating reality, adjusting and ad-libbing, synthesizing the scenes, saying the same thing over and over ag….
It seemed that I could tell the whole story pretty powerfully in those 18 months between October of '62 and the spring of '64 when they were all at t….
My favorites are Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, but those are a little off in terms of getting Detroit right on the head. But of course, you know, "D….
I discovered in writing the biography of Bill Clinton that it is actually easier to write a biography of someone who is dead. Although you can't inte….
It's hard to know exactly how people develop the characters they do. There could be people from humble beginnings that turn into jerks. Some characte….
I said that I'm only there to write the truth, I'm not going to cover anything up, but I'll put everything in context and get as close to the truth o….
My basic philosophy is that no human being is a saint..
Originally, John Kennedy was going to come speak, and then Lyndon Johnson. Because it was October of '62, neither made it because of the Cuban missil….
And all of the big shots of the car industry are there, strutting their stuff. And that year, they're feeling especially good because cars were selli….
I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the re….
And that John F. Kennedy uttered the first variation of "ask not what your country can do for you" in Detroit on Labor Day in 1960. So Detroit was re….
Well, there is something beautiful about ruins. I mean, in one sense it's not that different from going to Rome and looking at the Forum. But it's ch….
And then the industry itself was so cocky about what they were doing that they weren't seeing what was coming on the horizon with Japan and Germany a….
So, I mean, there's still vast swaths of the city that are suffering from a lack of jobs and poor housing and poor public schools, but they are build….
It was so crucial to the Civil Rights Movement that on June 23, 1963, Martin Luther King came to town, walked down Woodward Avenue with more than 100….
I want to write for history, not for the moment..
Detroit was an exaggeration of what was going on across the country. You could see the divisions, even within the Civil Rights Movement of that perio….
There was a precarious balance during those crucial months between composition and decomposition - what the world gained and what a great city lost. ….
It was a time of uncommon possibility and freedom, when Detroit created wondrous and lasting things. But life can be luminescent when it is most vuln….