This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on March 1, 2015.

Detroit is a great pseudo-memoir by the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Charlie LeDuff. It mixes new material with articles from his time at the Detroit News, a newspaper, that is, his personal observations and story with the stories he was covering.

I thought it was a great read, but that does not mean it is a perfect work of non-fiction by any means.

He’s certainly a great journalist and a great writer. At one point, he pokes a frozen dead man with his pencil. He’s carrying that around because pens freeze. (This is true. And it’s terrible when it happens and one has no pencils.)

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