DETROIT: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff. Penguin Press, 2013, 286 pp., $27.95 (hardcover)
Charlie LeDuff's "Detroit: An American Autopsy" is a hard-eyed look at some of the recent villains and victims of a city battered for half a century by political corruption, racial strife and industrial collapse.
LeDuff is a former New York Times reporter who was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for a series about race. After 20 years, he returned to his native town in 2008 and took a job with the Detroit News.