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“Charlie LeDuff is...a brilliant writer. Detroit is full of righteous anger and
heartbreaking details. It’s also funny as hell. Hunter S. Thompson would’ve
loved every page of this book.”
— Eric Schlosser, New York Times bestselling author
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“LeDuff has done his best, and his book is better than
good.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“One cannot read Mr.
LeDuff’s amalgam of memoir and reportage and not be shaken by the cold eye he
casts on hard truths…A little gonzo, a little gumshoe, some gawker, some
good-Samaritan—it is hard to ignore reporting like Mr. LeDuff’s.”
— Wall Street Journal
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“Charlie LeDuff is a remarkable journalist, and this book
is filled with incredible writing as he witnesses his home city crumble through
neglect and corruption.”
— Huffington Post
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“What to do when you’re a reporter and your native city
is rotting away? If you’re LeDuff, you leave the New York Times and head into the wreckage to ride with firemen,
hang with the corrupt pols, and retrace your own family’s sad steps through
drugs. Others have written well about the city, but none with the visceral
anger, the hair-tearing frustration, and the hungry humanity of LeDuff.”
— Newsweek
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“Powerful
and immensely enjoyable…With the same critical eye he uses on others, LeDuff
entwines his personal life into the narrative, effectively breaking down any ‘us
vs. them’ posturing. Eric Martin’s narration is exactly right, reflecting all
of LeDuff’s sincerity, outrage, and despair…This masterly snapshot of a city in
ruins translates superbly to the spoken word.”
— Library Journal (starred audio review)
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“Pultizer Prize-winning journalist LeDuff delivers an
edgy portrait of the decline, destruction, and possible redemption of his
hometown…LeDuff writes with honesty and compassion about a city that’s
destroying itself—and breaking his heart.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“A book full of both literary grace and hard-won
world-weariness…Iggy Pop meets Jim Carroll and Charles Bukowski.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“You wouldn’t think a
book about the stinking decay of the American dream could be this engaging,
this irreverent, this laugh-at-loud funny. But not everyone can write like
Charlie LeDuff. I’m tempted to say he’s the writer for our desperate times the
way Steinbeck and Orwell were for other people’s desperate times, except he’s
such an original he’s like no one but himself.”
— Alexandra Fuller, author of Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
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“Eric
Martin hits all the right notes in his narration of journalist Charlie LeDuff’s
chronicle of the problems that plague his hometown, the once flourishing and
now foundering Detroit. The author’s edgy tone is tough and uncompromising,
befitting the harsh realities facing those who remain in the troubled city.
Martin’s narration mirrors LeDuff’s writing as he voices the poverty,
corruption, and crime of the city as well as the brash and irreverent
personality of the author himself. Both author and narrator are by turns
incredulous, despairing, and hopeful, though, as LeDuff concedes, hope can be
hard to come by nowadays in Detroit. Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile