Customer Reviews

Who Killed Detroit?: Other Cities Beware!

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

No wonder Detroit declined if this book and Made in Detroit by Clemens are the best one can come up with for an explanation of Detroit's demise. I went to Detroit Labor Day of 2004 and thought it looked liked it had been hit by a neutron bomb. I have yet to find a book that gives a truly thoughtful analysis of what happened to Detroit.
This book is unimaginably poorly written and disorganized. Is the author dyslexic?. Chock full of "more on this later" and "which I discussed earlier". But this book has some amazing facts on the Republic of New African and Aretha Franklin's pastor dad's collusion with black militants. So it is the better of the two books for insights.
Despite the bad writing I would have given it 3 stars for the amazing facts except it peters out badly near the end as the author, a former chief of the Detroit P.D., dwells on his definitions of good policing.

This book is a poor substitute for Thomas Sugrue's "Origins of the Urban Crisis." More sensational and less objective, Holloway's weak prose add very little to the important discourse on the fall of Detroit. At best, this book should be considered a supplement (with its unique sources) to more rigorous and thoughtful writings.

Florida: oranges. Hawaii: pineapples. Idaho: potatoes. Detroit: embezzlers.

Neither WHO KILLED DETROIT? nor any other book I've read has honestly confronted the unpleasant truth that Detroit has declined mainly because it's festooned with crooks. The status quo has been the same for more than twenty-five years: from the mayor to the meter maid, anybody in civic government who can get his/her hands on public money steals it. Detroit's "civilian" population, in the meantime, takes off time from murder, car jacking, drug-dealing, arson, burglary, and rape only to elect and re-elect the very same political vampires who suck out the city's lifeblood. Business has fled Detroit because Detroit's no place to do business. As of November, 2009, one-third of Detroit's buildings, domestic and commercial, are empty. The city is riddled with vacant lots. Its downtown resembles Dresden after the Allied bombing. Law-abiding citizens, regardless of race, have fled to other locations because the city is: (1) no place to live; (2) no place to work; (3) no place to raise a family. Detroit's 911 response-time is a national scandal. Crimes against property aren't acknowledged in Detroit; the police don't even bother to investigate transgressions short of homicide.

"Detroit: a World-Class City" squawked the advertisements when Detroit hosted the Super Bowl a few years back. Sure: a THIRD-World city. The sides of most downtown buildings were covered to disguise their vacancy and dilapidation. The apologists for Murder City are accomplished denial-meistern, frantically attempting to bury the ugly truth under a cascade of PC "feel good" blather. "There are a lot of good things about Detroit!" Maybe so, but in the final analysis they don't offset the city's demerits. Anybody who has an opportunity to compare 21st Century Detroit with other major American or foreign cities will agree that Detroit SHOULD be ashamed of itself. But it isn't.

Detroit is a sinkhole. It'll take a hundred years to rehabilitate it.

I enjoyed alot of the facts in this book and I really enjoyed the excerpts from FBI files and such, but I did not enjoy the main author. This book has some real valid and promising advice, but the author injects himself into the book far too much. This book seems less like advice and more like a publicity campaign for the author. Co-authored by Diane Holloway Ph.D., who did alot of the research and I believe is responsible for the excerpts I did enjoy. If you're a die-hard Detroit fan, then I say go ahead and get this book but be warned the author has a pretty crummy current view of the city that's unfair and biased especially since he doesn't live here anymore!

An interesting book written by the former Police Commissioner of Detroit after the 1967 Riots. He offers his opinion on what it took to bring down the city including: police, citizens, media, politcs, etc. He relys on everything from Playboy Magazine to Sidney Fine (author of Violence in the Model City) to prove his point; that it takes a criminal and a victim to bring down a city. His style of writing is one that doesnt drone on and on for 200 pages, which, of course is very helpful.

Great book for anyone interested in knowing why the City of Detroit is so screwed up.

This former Detroit police commissioner had personal knowledge and documents of the groups that have brought Detroit down, and he tells all in this book. Let's hope the leaders of Detroit pay attention and try to turn things around.

This book is like reading the comment section of The Detroit News -- pasted together end to end ad infinitum, ad nauseum. It's disorganized, badly written and waste of time because it tells us, adds nothing and its worth nothing.

Sad to say he can say a bunch of negative things about Detroit. The metro Detroit area sadly does have racial problems between Blacks and Whites. Does he have a problem with Detroit because it is mainly black run? 8 Mile Rd currently divides the whites from the blacks. It is a very segregated town, and just because the city is struggling doesn't make it a bad place.

ALSO HOW CAN YOU TRUST A BOOK WHEN HE GETS A LOT OF HIS INFORMATION FROM JACK LESSENBERRY WHO IS A WRITER FOR THE METRO TIMES MAGAZINE WHICH IS NOTHING BUT A SEX MAGAZINE.