A People's History of Detroit

Recent bouts of gentrification and investment in Detroit have led some to call it the greatest turnaround story in American history. Meanwhile activists point to the citys cuts to public services water shutoffs mass foreclosures and violent police raids. In A Peoples History of Detroit Mark Jay and Philip Conklin use a class framework to tell a sweeping story of Detroit from 1913 to the present embedding Motowns history in a global economic context. Attending to the struggle between corporate elites and radical working-class organizations Jay and Conklin outline the complex sociopolitical dynamics underlying major events in Detroits past from the rise of Fordism and the formation of labor unions to deindustrialization and the citys recent bankruptcy. They demonstrate that Detroits history is not a tale of two cities―one of wealth and development and another racked by poverty and racial violence; rather it is the story of a single Detroit that operates according to capitalisms mandates.