One of the strengths of the Clarke is its local history publications. Through these books, a researcher can trace the history of communities throughout the state. Perhaps understandably, many of these volumes have a certain celebratory tone to them, in essence saying welcome to our town, it was (and is) a great place.
Michigan’s local history is not, however, always happy. Detroit is the obvious example of this. In the first half of the twentieth century, the city was a case study for successful industrialization, with its future lionized as “dynamic Detroit,” the city moved forward to ever greater success. In the last half of the century, Detroit increasingly became a much sadder case study regarding the American post-industrial landscape. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the city’s infrastructure, built to support a community of approximately two million, was no longer sustainable through the diminishing local taxes paid by the approximately 700,000 souls who still lived within the city limits.
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As historian Thomas J. Sugrue writes in the book’s introduction, “No place epitomizes the creative and destructive forces of modernity more than Detroit, past and present.” It is a stark history, but an important one to preserve.