There was a precarious balance during those crucial months between composition and decomposition - what the world gained and what a great city lost. Even then, some part of Detroit was dying, and that is where the story begins.

Well, there is something beautiful about ruins. I mean, in one sense it's not that different from going to Rome and looking at the Forum. But it's changing. It truly is. I'm optimistic but skeptical.

It's hard to know exactly how people develop the characters they do. There could be people from humble beginnings that turn into jerks. Some characteristics are just part of that special soul of that human being.

I want my books to last, to stand the test of time, and to do that I focus on the forces that shape the subject - the cultural and sociological geography - to capture them in a way that will explain them no matter what they are doing.

It is?classic Bill Clinton, sincere and deceptive at the same time, requiring a careful reading between the lines.

I discovered in writing the biography of Bill Clinton that it is actually easier to write a biography of someone who is dead. Although you can't interview them, you have a fuller perspective on their whole life after they're gone and people are more willing to talk about them.

And then the industry itself was so cocky about what they were doing that they weren't seeing what was coming on the horizon with Japan and Germany and other places that were building smaller cars.