Download or read book A 500 House in Detroit written by Drew Philp and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young college grad buys a house in Detroit for $500 and attempts to restore it—and his new neighborhood—to its original glory in this “deeply felt, sharply observed personal quest to create meaning and community out of the fallen…A standout” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Drew Philp, an idealistic college student from a working-class Michigan family, decides to live where he can make a difference. He sets his sights on Detroit, the failed metropolis of abandoned buildings, widespread poverty, and rampant crime. Arriving with no job, no friends, and no money, Philp buys a ramshackle house for five hundred dollars in the east side neighborhood known as Poletown. The roomy Queen Anne he now owns is little more than a clapboard shell on a crumbling brick foundation, missing windows, heat, water, electricity, and a functional roof. A $500 House in Detroit is Philp’s raw and earnest account of rebuilding everything but the frame of his house, nail by nail and room by room. “Philp is a great storyteller…[and his] engrossing” (Booklist) tale is also of a young man finding his footing in the city, the country, and his own generation. We witness his concept of Detroit shift, expand, and evolve as his plan to save the city gives way to a life forged from political meaning, personal connection, and collective purpose. As he assimilates into the community of Detroiters around him, Philp guides readers through the city’s vibrant history and engages in urgent conversations about gentrification, racial tensions, and class warfare. Part social history, part brash generational statement, part comeback story, A $500 House in Detroit “shines [in its depiction of] the ‘radical neighborliness’ of ordinary people in desperate circumstances” (Publishers Weekly). This is an unforgettable, intimate account of the tentative revival of an American city and a glimpse at a new way forward for generations to come.
Download or read book Canvas Detroit written by Julie Pincus and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detroit’s unique and partly abandoned cityscape has scarred its image around the world for decades. But in the last several years journalists have begun to view the city through a different lens, focusing on the wide range of contemporary artists finding inspiration amid the emptiness and adding a more complex chapter to the story of a city long labeled as a haunting symbol of U.S. economic decline. In Canvas Detroit, Julie Pincus and Nichole Christian combine vibrant full-color photography of the city’s much-buzzed-about art scene with thoughtful narrative that explores the art and artists that are re-creating Detroit. Canvas Detroit captures hundreds of pieces of artwork in many forms—including large-scale and small-scale murals, sculptures, portraits, light projections, wearable art, and installations (made with wood, glass, living plants, fiber, and fabric). Works are situated in both obvious and more hidden spaces, including on and in houses, garages, factories, alleyways, doors, and walls, while some structures have been entirely transformed into art. Pincus and Christian profile internationally known figures like Banksy, Matthew Barney, and Tyree Guyton; prominent Detroit artists such as Scott Hocking, Jerome Ferretti, and Robert Sestock; and collectives like Power House Productions, Hygenic Dress League, the Empowerment Plan, and Theatre Bizarre. Canvas Detroit also features contributions by Marion Jackson, John Gallagher, Michael H. Hodges, Rebecca R. Hart, and Linda Yablonsky that contextualize the current artistic moment in the city. This beautifully designed and informative volume showcases the stunning breadth and depth of artwork currently being done in Detroit. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in arts and culture in the city.
Download or read book The World According to Fannie Davis written by Bridgett M. Davis and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As seen on the Today Show: This true story of an unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and their life in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s highlights "the outstanding humanity of black America" (James McBride). In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee, borrowed $100 from her brother to run a numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis's mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts." A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" and provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.
Download or read book Flower House Detroit written by Heather Saunders and published by . This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass written by Aaron Foley and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In one of Curbed: Detroit’s Top 11 Books about Detroit, Aaron Foley, editor of The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook, offers the definitive inside look at one of America’s most talked-about and least understood cities. With a wry sense of humor, Foley, a native Detroiter, walks you through the most difficult questions about the Motor City, offering seven simple rules for making it there. Perfect for coastal transplants, wary suburbanites, unwitting gentrifiers, or start-up disruptors, this recently updated guidebook offers advice on everything from the glories of Vernors ginger ale to how to rehab a house to how to not sound like an uninformed racist. In twenty short chapters, Foley walks you through: How Detroiters do business The unofficial guide to enjoying Faygo How to be gay in Detroit How to raise a Detroit kid How to party in Detroit. Both hilarious and insightful, this no-frills look at Motown is written for those who live there but also, as Vanity Fair put it, “for anyone participating in contemporary global urbanization who would like to avoid behaving like a subjugating dick.”
Download or read book Lost Restaurants of Detroit written by Paul Vachon and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2016 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While some restaurants come and go with little fanfare, others are dearly missed and never forgotten. In 1962, patrons of the Caucus Club were among the first to hear the voice of an eighteen-year-old Barbra Streisand. Before Stouffer's launched a frozen food empire, it was better known for its restaurants with two popular locations in Detroit. The Machus Red Fox was the last place former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa was seen alive. Through stories and recipes nearly lost to time, author Paul Vachon explores the history of the Motor City's fine dining, ethnic eateries and everything in between. Grab a cup of coffee--he's got stories to share.
Download or read book Detroit Resurrected To Bankruptcy and Back written by Nathan Bomey and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when an iconic American city goes broke? At exactly 4:06 p.m. on July 18, 2013, the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy. It was the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history—the Motor City had finally hit rock bottom. But what led to that fateful day, and how did the city survive the perilous months that followed? In Detroit Resurrected, Nathan Bomey delivers the inside story of the fight to save Detroit against impossible odds. Bomey, who covered the bankruptcy for the Detroit Free Press, provides a gripping account of the tremendous clash between lawyers, judges, bankers, union leaders, politicians, philanthropists, and the people of Detroit themselves. The battle to rescue this iconic city pulled together those who believed in its future—despite their differences. Help came in the form of Republican governor Rick Snyder, a technocrat who famously called himself “one tough nerd”; emergency manager Kevyn Orr, a sharp-shooting lawyer and “yellow-dog Democrat”; and judges Steven Rhodes and Gerald Rosen, the key architects of the grand bargain that would give the city a second chance at life. Detroit had a long way to go. Facing a legacy of broken promises, the city had to seek unprecedented sacrifices from retirees and union leaders, who fought for their pensions and benefits. It had to confront the consequences of years of municipal corruption while warding off Wall Street bond insurers who demanded their money back. And it had to consider liquidating the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose world-class collection became an object of desire for the city’s numerous creditors. In a tight, suspenseful narrative, Detroit Resurrected reveals the tricky path to rescuing the city from $18 billion in debt and giving new hope to its citizens. Based on hundreds of exclusive interviews, insider sources, and thousands of records, Detroit Resurrected gives a sweeping account of financial ruin, backroom intrigue, and political rebirth in the struggle to reinvent one of America’s iconic cities.
Download or read book DAD CAN I BORROW THE HEARSE written by Thomas J. Van Kula and published by Gatekeeper Press. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Located within the boundaries of one of the East Side of Detroit's "bluest" of blue collar neighborhoods, 9074 St. Cyril Avenue served a dual purpose - funeral home and family residence. Occupying the first floor of the impressive yellow bricked structure from 1942 until 1978 was the Van Kula Funeral Home - the second floor I called home. For over four decades I was associated with death and dying on an almost daily occurrence. Residing over a funeral home with five siblings added to the plenitude of memories - poignant, humorous and enduring. As an observer and eventual practitioner of one of the world's oldest professions, I have borne witness to human nature under the most demanding of emotional circumstances. In "DAD, CAN I BORROW THE HEARSE?" I have attempted to present a summary of events as they related to me - "The Funeral Director's Kid".
Download or read book Middlesex written by Jeffrey Eugenides and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-07-18 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning eight decades and chronicling the wild ride of a Greek-American family through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Jeffrey Eugenides’ witty, exuberant novel on one level tells a traditional story about three generations of a fantastic, absurd, lovable immigrant family -- blessed and cursed with generous doses of tragedy and high comedy. But there’s a provocative twist. Cal, the narrator -- also Callie -- is a hermaphrodite. And the explanation for this takes us spooling back in time, through a breathtaking review of the twentieth century, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie’s grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set our narrator’s life in motion. Middlesex is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It’s a brilliant exploration of divided people, divided families, divided cities and nations -- the connected halves that make up ourselves and our world.
Download or read book The Elusive Purple Gang written by Gregory A. Fournier and published by Wheatmark, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-11-29 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Elusive Purple Gang: Detroit's Kosher Nostra is a concise history of one of America's most notorious Prohibition gangs. The Burnstein brothers and their associates were the only Jewish gang in the United States to dominate the rackets of a major American city. From their meteoric rise to the top of Detroit's underworld to their ultimate demise, this is an episodic account of the Purple Gang's corrosive pursuit of power and wealth and their inevitable plunge towards self-destruction.
Download or read book The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories written by Peter Haining and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanded and with great new stories, this is the biggest and best anthology of ghostly hauntings ever. Over 40 tales of visitation by the undead - from vengeful and violent spirits, set on causing harm to innocent people tucked up in their homes, to rarer and more kindly ghosts, returning from the grave to reach out across the other side. Yet others entertain desires of a more sinister bent, including the erotic. This new edition includes a selection of favourite haunted house tales chosen by famous screen stars Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Plus a top ranking list of contributors that includes Stephen King, Bram Stoker, Ruth Rendell, and James Herbert - all brought together by an anthologist who himself lives in a haunted house. Stories include: Something unspeakable lurks in a Connecticut apartment closet, in Stephen King's 'The Boogeyman'; An Irish castle holds something truly horrifying in wait, in 'The Whistling Room' by William Hope Hodgson; The lecherous old ghost of a Georgian country house eyes up his latest tenant, in Norah Lofts' 'Mr Edward'; An ancient mansion on a shelf of rock previously occupied by a doomed castle, in 'In Letters of Fire' by Gaston Le Roux; The hunter is hunted in James Herbert's tale of nineteenth-century country mansion, 'The Ghost Hunter'; Psychic phenomena and poltergeists, avenging spirits and phantom lovers - curl up and read on, but never imagine you are safe from a visit...
Download or read book Detroit written by Scott Martelle and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detroit was established as a French settlement three-quarters of a century before the founding of this nation. A remote outpost built to protect trapping interests, it grew as agriculture expanded on the new frontier. Its industry leapt forward with the completion of the Erie Canal, which opened up the Great Lakes to the East Coast. Surrounded by untapped natural resources, Detroit turned iron into stoves and railcars, and eventually cars by the millions. This vibrant commercial hub attracted businessmen and labor organizers, European immigrants and African Americans from the rural South. At its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, one in six American jobs were connected to the auto industry and Detroit. And then the bottom fell out. Detroit: A Biography takes a long, unflinching look at the evolution of one of America’s great cities, and one of the nation’s greatest urban failures. It seeks to explain how the city grew to become the heart of American industry and how its utter collapse resulted from a confluence of public policies, private industry decisions, and deep, thick seams of racism. This updated paperback edition includes recent developments under Michigan’s Emergency Manager law. And it raises the question: when we look at modern-day Detroit, are we looking at the ghost of America’s industrial past or its future? Scott Martelle is the author of The Fear Within and Blood Passion and is a professional journalist who has written for the Detroit News, the Los Angeles Times, the Rochester Times-Union, and more.
Download or read book Shmulik Paints the Town written by Lisa Rose and published by Kar-Ben Publishing ™. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Israeli Independence Day is coming up and the mayor is planning a celebration. He asks Shmulik to make a mural in the park, and Shmulik agrees. But he can't decide what to paint! Maybe his dog, Ezra, can help!
Download or read book Driving with the Devil written by Neal Thompson and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-02-04 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story behind NASCAR’s hardscrabble, moonshine-fueled origins, “fascinating and fast-moving . . . even if you don’t know a master cylinder from a head gasket” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution). “[Neal] Thompson exhumes the sport’s Prohibition-era roots in this colorful, meticulously detailed history.”—Time Today’s NASCAR—equal parts Disney, Vegas, and Barnum & Bailey—is a multibillion-dollar conglomeration with 80 million fans, half of them women, that grows bigger and more mainstream by the day. Long before the sport’s rampant commercialism lurks a distant history of dark secrets that have been carefully hidden from view—until now. In the Depression-wracked South, with few options beyond the factory or farm, a Ford V-8 became the ticket to a better life. Bootlegging offered speed, adventure, and wads of cash. Driving with the Devil reveals how the skills needed to outrun federal agents with a load of corn liquor transferred perfectly to the red-dirt racetracks of Dixie. In this dynamic era (the 1930s and ’40s), three men with a passion for Ford V-8s—convicted felon Raymond Parks, foul-mouthed mechanic Red Vogt, and war veteran Red Byron, NASCAR’s first champ—emerged as the first stock car “team.” Theirs is the violent, poignant story of how moonshine and fast cars merged to create a sport for the South to call its own. In the tradition of Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, this tale captures a bygone era of a beloved sport and the character of the country at a moment in time.
Download or read book Detroit written by Dave Jordano and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dave Jordano returned to his hometown of Detroit to document the people who still live in what has become one of the country's most economically challenging cities. Against a backdrop of mass abandonment through years of white flight, unemployment hovering at almost three times the national average, city services cut to the bone, a real estate collapse of massive proportions, and ultimately filing the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, Jordano searches for the hope and perseverance of those who have had to endure the hardship of living in a post-industrial city that has fallen on the hardest of times. From the lower Southeast Side where urban renewal and government programs slowly became the benchmark of civic failure, to the dwindling enclaves of neighborhoods like Delray and Poletown (onceblue-collar neighborhoods that have all but vanished),Jordano seeks to dispel the popular myth perpetrated through the media that Detroit is an empty wasteland devoid of people. He encounters resolute individuals determined to make this city a place to live,from a homeless man who decided to build his own one-room structure on an abandoned industrial lot because he was tired of sleeping on public benches, to a group of squatters who repurposed long-abandoned houses on a street called Goldengate. Jordano discovers and rebroadcastsa message of hope and endurance to an otherwise greatly misunderstood and misrepresented city.Detroit: Unbroken Downis not a document solely about what's been destroyed, but even more critically, about all that has been left behind and those who remain to cope with it.
Download or read book 100 Things Michigan Fans Should Know Do Before They Die written by Angelique Chengelis and published by Triumph Books. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Michigan Wolverines fans have taken in a game or two at legendary Michigan Stadium, have sported khaki pants on gameday like Jim Harbaugh, and have heard the story of the 10-Year War. But only real fans know the legend behind the M Ring, the best place to eat when on a road trip to Ohio State, or all the lyrics to "The Victors." 100 Things Michigan Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource guide for true fans of Michigan Wolverines football. Whether you're a die-hard booster from the days of Bo Schembechler or a new supporter of Coach Harbaugh, these are the 100 things every fan needs to know and do in their lifetime. In this revised and updated edition, Angelique Chengelis, who covers the Wolverines for the Detroit News, has collected every essential piece of Michigan knowledge and trivia, as well as must-do activities, and ranks them all from 1 to 100, providing an entertaining and easy-to-follow checklist as you progress on your way to fan superstardom.
Download or read book The Unsettlers written by Mark Sundeen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An in-depth and compelling account of diverse Americans living off the grid.” —Los Angeles Times The radical search for the simple life in today’s America. On a frigid April night, a classically trained opera singer, five months pregnant, and her husband, a former marine biologist, disembark an Amtrak train in La Plata, Missouri, assemble two bikes, and pedal off into the night, bound for a homestead they've purchased, sight unseen. Meanwhile, a horticulturist, heir to the Great Migration that brought masses of African Americans to Detroit, and her husband, a product of the white flight from it, have turned to urban farming to revitalize the blighted city they both love. And near Missoula, Montana, a couple who have been at the forefront of organic farming for decades navigate what it means to live and raise a family ethically. A work of immersive journalism steeped in a distinctively American social history and sparked by a personal quest, The Unsettlers traces the search for the simple life through the stories of these new pioneers and what inspired each of them to look for -- or create -- a better existence. Captivating and clear-eyed, it dares us to imagine what a sustainable, ethical, authentic future might actually look like.
