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Sections
General: Culture, trivia and all things D!
Sports: Tigers, Lions, Shock & Pistons.
Architecture: Penobscott, Guardian, Fisher.
History: Cadillac, Kwame, Rappers and Gangsters.
GENERAL
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Motoons
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Ok I'm a cartoon Geek, Gaston/Franquin, Farside/Breathed, I've got way too much of this. But Mike Thompson's wry view in the Freep is always
a welcome addition. Some of the best collected together here.
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The Detroit
Almanac
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This has to be the best Detroit coffee table book. Put on a Tigers game and just randomly flick through its 600+ pages while
pudge and JV do the business.
A couple of hours later your head is going to be a mess of querky facts and figures. From the belle isle
beep through to average rainfall and stats for every team and major player in the city. All this backed by the
Freep's extensive photo library. Book #1 for September.
Amazon Review
This is an updated edition of The Detroit Almanac, originally published in October 2000 as metro Detroiters got ready to mark Detroit's 300th anniversary in July 2001. The new edition includes a 16-page prologue on the beginning of Detroit's fourth century, followed by the original 648 pages devoted to the region's first 300 years.
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Quotations of Mayor Coleman Young
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I originally saw this on Motor/SuperSport's booklist. Some of these are gems:
"Swearing is an art form. You can express yourself much more exactly, much more succinctly, with properly used curse words."
"Racism is like high blood pressure—the person who has it doesn’t know he has it until he drops over with a goddamned stroke. There are no symptoms of racism. The victim of racism is in a much better position to tell you whether or not you’re a racist than you are."
"I issue a warning to all those pushers, to all rip-off artists, to all muggers: It’s time to leave Detroit; hit Eight Mile Road! And I don’t give a damn if they are black or white, or if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road."
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SPORTS
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Roar Restored!
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2006 was the season Jim Leyland arrived and the Tigers came from nowhere. I recall yelling myself hoarse on so many occasions.
Maybe as an event season the 3am win this season against the Yankees and JV's perfect game draw level
but this pictorial record of the 2006 series is special! If the Tigers are your team, then be sure to check PaulHitz's Tigers flickr group.
Amazon Review
N/A
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ARCHITECTURE
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AIA Detroit
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This is another favorite of mine. Sure it's comprehensive, covering the history and architecture
of all the major buildings in the Detroit Metro area, but where it really shines is in the gossip.
Many of the buildings have links with each other and their own stories. How many houses did Kahn
design in Brush park, and why was one of them English Revival? Why are the Book and Guardian buildings
so unusual in shape. This book has the answers.
Publisher Review
With its sleek look and easy-to-use layout, this completely new guide to Detroit architecture provides a fresh, in-depth look at the city of Detroit itself as well as a number of distinctive environments outside the city proper. Like it predecessor, "Detroit Architecture: AIA Guide," "AIA Detroit" is an authoritative yet highly readable account of a wide range of structures and urban spaces. Organized as a series of walking (or driving) tours beginning with the Downtown area, the guide moves north, west, and east to explore the city's many districts and neighborhoods, and then takes a look at the special environments of the Grosse Pointe Lakeshore, the Cranbrook educational community, the GM Technical Center, and Ford's Dearborn. Photographs of each site and numerous useful maps throughout help readers visualize the locales. "AIA Detroit" serves as a much-needed tool in uncovering and navigating the city's rich architectural heritage for citizens, tourists, and architecture students alike.
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Art Deco in Detroit
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Spending time downtown the eras that appeal to me most are Deco and Nouveau. Fingers crossed the Book Cadillac refurb
manages to recapture much of this, but in this book the styles in Detroit are explored in their historical pristine states.
Another nice contribution from the Images of America series. If this is your thing, check out the D in the views of the past site.
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Detroit Movie Palaces
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I'm betting SNWEB has this book! Check out his flickr movie palaces group.
Amazon Review
The spokelike grid of wide grand avenues radiating out from downtown Detroit allowed for a concentration of theaters initially along Monroe Street near Campus Martius and, after the second decade of the 20th century, clustered around Grand Circus Park, all easily accessible by a vast network of streetcars. In its heyday, Grand Circus Park boasted a dozen palatial movie palaces containing an astonishing total of 26,000 seats. Of these theaters, five remain today, fully restored and operational for live entertainment. Detroit, more so than any other North American city, illustrates how demographic and economic forces dramatically changed the landscape of film exhibition in an urban setting.
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American City
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This is simply a beautiful book. Indeed we have several times opted for it as a gift for visiting speakers. If I recall the Metro times review Zbaren planned
to spend a few weeks shooting the city but ended up spending a lot more time, well worth it!
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HISTORY
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Detroit, a Motor City History
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This is one of David Lee Poremba's excellent books on Detroit's history. Complete coverage from the
pre-French settlements through to the building of th RenCen.
Amazon Review
On July 24, 1701, Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac stood in the heart of the wilderness on a bluff overlooking the Detroit River and claimed this frontier in the name of Louis XIV; thus began the story of Detroit, a city marked by pioneering spirits, industrial acumen, and uncommon durability. Over the course of its 300-year history, Detroit has been sculpted into a city unique in the American experience by its extraordinary mixture of diverse cultures: American Indian, French, British, American colonial, and a variety of immigrant newcomers. ÝÝDetroit: A Motor City History documents the major events that shaped this once-small French fur-trading outpost across three centuries of conflict and prosperity. Through informative text and a variety of imagery, readers experience firsthand the struggles of the nascent village against raiding Indian tribes and the incessant political and military tug of war between the colonial French and English, and then American interests. Like many other major cities across the United States, Detroit played a pivotal role in establishing the countryís economic and industrial power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, serving as a center for its well-known civilian and military mass-production resources. This visual history provides insight into Detroitís rapid evolution from a hamlet into a metropolis against a backdrop of important community and national affairs: the decimating fire of 1805, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and both world wars.
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Detroit, Then and Now
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I don't have this one although I think Motor may have it in his collection, definitely on the wish list though
Amazon Review
Famous the world over for automobile manufacture and the distinctive sounds of Motown music, Detroit, the Motor City, celebrates its 300th birthday in 2001. Detroit Then & Now is a fascinating look at this city's great history, taking historic photographs from the dawn of the camera age and comparing them with full-color photographs of the same scenes as they are during the Tricentennial. Despite an industrial heritage, the city has its culture including art museums, a historical museum and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, as well as a great zoological park, beaches, and marinas. With a reputation for sports and music, Detroit is as vibrant a city today as it ever has been. This book is a fascinating documentation of history and change in one of the United States' most important cities.
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Driving with the Devil
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The wild story behind the start of NASCAR. When heros were real heros and cars were real cars and ultimately the cars were the heros.
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