An engaging reconstruction of Detroit’s financial crisis and the broader implications of its comeback for other American...
A chronicle of the infamous bankruptcy of the Motor City, from financial mismanagement to rebirth.
In retrospect, the headline-stealing bankruptcy of Detroit, the largest municipality to file in American history, seems both tragically inevitable and necessary. For decades, the automotive industry that defined the city had been shrinking and consolidating, putting pressure on the city’s finances to deal with growing expenses and a shortage of tax income. But that’s only a single example identified by USA Today journalist Bomey in a lengthy list of reasons that gets at the complexity and systemic nature of Detroit’s problems, including an overextension and overcommitment to debt service, pension payments, and retiree health care costs. The author, who was the lead reporter for the Detroit Free Press on the city’s bankruptcy, hints at the chain of events that led to Detroit’s ruin, but his focus is on the elected officials, bureaucrats, and financiers tasked with trying to rescue the city. Among them are the appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr and former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, whose embarrassing corruption scandal led to his conviction on racketeering charges following the end of his term in 2008, an event that can be read as the symbolic death knell of the city. As Bomey breaks down the numbers behind the city’s default, he provides eye-popping statistics that perfectly capture the near-apocalyptic level of duress. For instance, adjusted for inflation, the total value of private property in Detroit fell from $45.2 billion in 1958 to $9.6 billion in 2012. Though the book is well-paced and highly readable, the collapse of Detroit is not an undocumented subject, and there is little in this narrative that has not already been dissected at length. But it’s an important subject, since the tale of Detroit’s financial woes can serve as a case study on how other cities can deal with economic transition.
An engaging reconstruction of Detroit’s financial crisis and the broader implications of its comeback for other American cities.Pub Date: April 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-393-24891-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.
A ground-level illustration of how the plague ravaged Europe.
For his tenth book, science writer Kelly (Three on the Edge, 1999, etc.) delivers a cultural history of the Black Death based on accounts left by those who witnessed the greatest natural disaster in human history. Spawned somewhere on the steppes of Central Asia, the plague arrived in Europe in 1347, when a Genoese ship carried it to Sicily from a trading post on the Black Sea. Over the next four years, at a time when, as the author notes, “nothing moved faster than the fastest horse,” the disease spread through the entire continent. Eventually, it claimed 25 million lives, one third of the European population. A thermonuclear war would be an equivalent disaster by today's standards, Kelly avers. Much of the narrative depends on the reminiscences of monks, doctors, and other literate people who buried corpses or cared for the sick. As a result, the author has plenty of anecdotes. Common scenes include dogs and children running naked, dirty, and wild through the streets of an empty village, their masters and parents dead; Jews burnt at the stake, scapegoats in a paranoid Christian world; and physicians at the University of Paris consulting the stars to divine cures. These tales give the author opportunities to show Europeans—filthy, malnourished, living in densely packed cities—as easy targets for rats and their plague-bearing fleas. They also allow him to ramble. Kelly has a tendency to lose the trail of the disease in favor of tangents about this or that king, pope, or battle. He returns to his topic only when he shifts to a different country or city in a new chapter, giving the book a haphazard feel. Remarkably, the story ends on a hopeful note. After so many perished, Europe was forced to develop new forms of technology to make up for the labor shortage, laying the groundwork for the modern era.
Occasionally unfocused, but redeems itself by putting a vivid, human face on an unimaginable nightmare.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000692-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.
A delightful new translation of what is widely considered the first work of history and nonfiction.
Herodotus has a wonderful, gossipy style that makes reading these histories more fun than studying the rise of the Persian Empire and its clash with Greece—however, that’s exactly what readers will do in this engaging history, which is full of interesting digressions and asides. Holland (In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire, 2012, etc.), whose lifelong devotion to Herodotus, Thucydides and other classical writers is unquestionable, provides an engaging modern translation. As Holland writes, Herodotus’ “great work is many things—the first example of nonfiction, the text that underlies the entire discipline of history, the most important source of information we have for a vital episode in human affairs—but it is above all a treasure-trove of wonders.” Those just being introduced to the Father of History will agree with the translator’s note that this is “the greatest shaggy-dog story ever written.” Herodotus set out to explore the causes of the Greco-Persian Wars and to explore the inability of East and West to live together. This is as much a world geography and ethnic history as anything else, and Herodotus enumerates social, religious and cultural habits of the vast (known) world, right down to the three mummification options available to Egyptians. This ancient Greek historian could easily be called the father of humor, as well; he irreverently describes events, players and their countless harebrained schemes. Especially enjoyable are his descriptions of the Persians making significant decisions under the influence and then waiting to vote again when sober. The gifts Herodotus gave history are the importance of identifying multiple sources and examining differing views.
A feast for students of ancient history and budding historians of any period.Pub Date: May 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-670-02489-6
Page Count: 840
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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