Detroit had a lot of competition to become THE Motor City. Ten years prior, Cleveland would undoubtedly have won the crown, with its many car and car parts makers in the city.Even before then, the East Coast of the U.S. were the first states with car companies--including steam and electric cars. Detroit had the first auto show and many other factors-Ransom Olds, Henry Ford, and the Milwaukee Junction-that helped it become the Motor City.

Motor City Mafia: A Century of Organized Crime in Detroit chronicles the storied and hallowed gangland history of the notorious Detroit underworld. Scott M. Burnstein takes the reader inside the belly of the beast, tracking the bloodshed, exploits, and leadership of the southeast Michigan crime syndicate as never before seen in print. Through a stunning array of rare archival photographs and images, Motor City Mafia captures Detroit's most infamous past, from its inception in the early part of the 20th century, through the years when the iconic Purple Gang ruled the city's streets during Prohibition, through the 1930s and the formation of the local Italian mafia, and the Detroit crime family's glory days in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, all the way to the downfall of the area's mob reign in the 1980s and 1990s.

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. Detroit: 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 country's 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 Detroit's 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.

Building-by-building pictorial and historical survey of the remarkable collection of architectural sculpture found in Detroit.

This is the first-ever historical study across all musical genres in any American metropolis. Detroit in the 1940s-60s was not just "the capital of the twentieth century" for industry and the war effort, but also for the quantity and extremely high quality of its musicians, from jazz to classical to ethnic. The author, a Detroiter from 1943, begins with a reflection of his early life with his family and others, then weaves through the music traffic of all the sectors of a dynamic and volatile city. Looking first at the crucial role of the public schools in fostering talent, Motor City Music surveys the neighborhoods of older European immigrants and of the later huge waves of black and white southerners who migrated to Detroit to serve the auto and defense industries. Jazz stars, polka band leaders, Jewish violinists, and figures like Lily Tomlin emerge in the spotlight. Shaping institutions, from the Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers through radio stations and Motown, all deployed music to bring together a city rent by relentless segregation, policing, and spasms of violence. The voices of Detroit's poets, writers, and artists round out the chorus.