I said that I'm only there to write the truth, I'm not going to cover anything up, but I'll put everything in context and get as close to the truth of this person as I can.

Well, there were several things. One was that the industry itself built in Detroit was abandoning the city - taking factories elsewhere, the corporate headquarters elsewhere.

Originally, John Kennedy was going to come speak, and then Lyndon Johnson. Because it was October of '62, neither made it because of the Cuban missile crisis.

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.

I said that I'm only there to write the truth, I'm not going to cover anything up, but I'll put everything in context and get as close to the truth of this person as I can.

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.

It was a time of uncommon possibility and freedom, when Detroit created wondrous and lasting things. But life can be luminescent when it is most vulnerable.