Or in another segment, Charlie plays a game of golf across an eighteen-mile swath of Detroit in a pair of old sneakers and some shorts to show just how empty the place is. (Asterisk on this one: probably the only segment in the history of local network news in which producers at the station had to pilize a reporter’s balls.) A million people watched that on YouTube-not including the people who watched it on TV, or on the station’s website, etc.-which is 40 percent more than the population of Detroit. He picks her up some McDonald’s, searches her house for assailants, washes his pants, and takes a bath, all hours before the cops arrive. Like for instance, in one segment he waits with a woman who has called 911 after her house was apparently broken into. Besides being the author of a best-selling book about how fucked Detroit is ( Detroit: An American Autopsy, published earlier this year), Charlie got famous by basically reinventing local news reporting. But he’s probably the most famous man in Detroit who isn’t (1) Matthew Stafford, (2) Berry Gordy, or (3) in jail for sexting and also pillaging the city coffers (see Kilpatrick, Kwame-the first mayor in modern history to be convicted of a felony while still in office). Detroit: An American Autopsy is an unbelievable story of a hard town in a rough time filled with some of the strangest and strongest people our country has to offer.The other reason Charlie alters the chemistry in the room is because he is a celebrity. He beats on the doors of union bosses and homeless squatters, powerful businessmen and struggling homeowners and the ordinary people holding the city together by sheer determination. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark, and the righteous indignation only a native son possesses, LeDuff sets out to uncover what destroyed his city.

Once the vanguard of America’s machine agemass-production, blue-collar jobs, and automobiles≽etroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, dropouts, and foreclosures. Once the richest city in America, Detroit is now the nation’s poorest. Having led us on the way up, Detroit now seems to be leading us on the way down.

An explosive exposé of America’s lost prosperityfrom Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Charlie LeDuffīack in his broken hometown, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie LeDuff searches the ruins of Detroit for clues to his family’s troubled past.

Detroit by charlie leduff