History Told Four Ways
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One need only look at the phenomenon that is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton,” to see just how riveting history—and how original its telling—can be. David Maraniss’ “Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story,” is no different. Unable to put it down, I found myself marveling at the uniquely different ways the author and three others I’ve read this past year so completely immersed me in their respective time and place. A Detroit native, Maraniss’ supreme affection for the Motor City is evidenced in his breadth of anything-but-boring details (who knew that the museum-like Ford Rotunda was one of the top five tourist attractions in the U.S.—regularly beating out Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty until it burned down in November, 1962).
Chronicling just 18 months (from the autumn of ‘62 to the spring if ’64) to paint an indelible picture of the city’s rise and fall, he tells how the complicated history between minorities and police brought about the demise of the storied, black-owned Hotel Gotham; how the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s “Walk to Freedom” ended at Cabo Hall with Martin Luther King, Jr. “practicing” his “I Have a Dream” speech; and how downtown’s “Spirit of Detroit” sculpture came to symbolize the city’s dashed dreams of hosting the 1968 Olympics (which went to Mexico City).
Author of “The Other Wes Moore”
Readers will discover an equally vivid story of Baltimore’s transformation in “The Other Wes Moore”—though it is the farthest thing from a history book. It was written by a Rhodes Scholar, decorated Armey veteran and Baltimore native named Wes Moore after he chanced upon a newspaper story about another Wes Moore (also a native of the city), who had recently been incarcerated following a jewelry store holdup and security guard shooting. In the course of writing the book, the author befriends the inmate—and the result is both an uplifting and heartbreaking tale of dual paths; of mentors and murders, absent parents and parental sacrifice—all set against a city churning with the effects of gentrification, drugs, and social unrest.
If Wes Moore’s story is all too familiar, Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning, “The Warmth of Other Suns” tells one most of us have never heard. The author, journalist and Princeton professor brilliantly chooses to tell this “epic story of America's great migration” by focusing on just three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who traded Jim Crow Mississippi for Chicago in 1937 (eventually voting for Barack Obama in his first Senate race); George Starling, who fled Florida for Harlem in 194, weathering civil unrest and his family’s fall, before finding peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, becoming Ray Charles’ personal physician and a pillar of black high society in L.A. African-American thought leaders have argued for years that America’s racial issues will only heal when the true story of slavery and its aftermath is told. While I’ve yet to know the full extent of that story, Wilkerson has taught me an invaluable chapter.
Finally, for those who like their history without all the inherent lessons, there’s Bill Bryson’s “One Summer: America 1927.” I had thoroughly enjoyed another of this cultural historian’s books (“At Home: A Short History of Private Life”), and found “One Summer” to be a veritable who’s who of the depression era—from Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth and Al Capone to Al Jolson, Sacco and Vanzetti, and famed flagpole sitter, Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly. Capturing an era in one historic summer, the book is as rich in scope as a Ken Burns 10-part documentary… but a hell of a lot quicker to get through.
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