Well, There Were Several Things.

I Look For Two Things When I Am About To Launch Into A Book. First, There Has To Be A Dramatic Arc To The Story Itself That Will Carry Me, And The Reader, From Beginning To End. Second, The Story Has To Weave Through Larger Themes That Can Illuminate The World Of The Subject.

Well, Here You Had A City That Was Selling More Cars Than Ever Before, That Had This Wondrous Music Being Created, That Was So Vital To The Labor And Civil Rights Of This Country, And Yet It Was Dying And Didn't See It, Except For Some Sociologist At Wayne State University Who Predicted That Detroit Was Losing Population By A Half-million By The End Of That '60s Decade, And That That Trend Would Continue Taking Away Its Tax Base.

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.

I Want To Write For History, Not For The Moment.

Detroit Was An Exaggeration Of What Was Going On Across The Country. You Could See The Divisions, Even Within The Civil Rights Movement Of That Period. At The Same Time That Martin Luther King Was Talking About His Dream, Malcolm X Gave His Most Famous Address In Detroit During That Same Period, "the Message To The Grass Roots," Dismissing The Notion Of Integration.