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Maraniss' 'Once in a Great City': Doom that few saw coming

Unbridled optimism reigned in Detroit as 1963 rolled in. The Big Three auto companies were about to enjoy their greatest-ever sales year. The city's native music was taking over the world through Motown Records. It was thought to be a front-runner for the 1968 Summer Olympics.

David Maraniss, author of "Once in a Great City." Photo: Lucian Perkins
David Maraniss, author of "Once in a Great City." Photo: Lucian PerkinsRead more

Once in a Great City

A Detroit Story

By David Maraniss

Simon & Schuster.

464 pp. $32.50

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Reviewed by

Glen Macnow

nolead ends Unbridled optimism reigned in Detroit as 1963 rolled in. The Big Three auto companies were about to enjoy their greatest-ever sales year. The city's native music was taking over the world through Motown Records. It was thought to be a front-runner for the 1968 Summer Olympics.

Few foresaw the decline and decay that befell one of America's great cities over the next half-century. But the warnings were there. In Once in a Great City, David Maraniss shows how, in the glow of good times, city leaders missed the signs.

The cast is fascinating. Upstart Lee Iacocca conceives and unveils the Ford Mustang - originally called the Torino, but changed when company boss Henry Ford II's affair with an Italian jet-setter led to his very public divorce. Berry Gordy Jr. models production at his Motown studios from what he learned at the auto assembly lines. Lyndon Johnson and Malcolm X play more than cameos, as do Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross. And you will come to know the Detroiters - Mayor Jerry Cavanagh, Gov. George Romney, the Rev. C.L. Franklin (father of soul singer Aretha Franklin) - who steered the Motor City through this heady era.

At times, reading Once in a Great City feels like watching a horror movie. You see the character whistling down a hallway, unaware of the doom that lies ahead. A small handful did envision what was to come. The most prescient character is Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers union and confidant to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Johnson. He watched VW Beetles roll off American docks in the early 1960s and foresaw the growing taste for smaller, more efficient cars. He proposed the Big Three team up to create such a vehicle. Blinded by profits, they laughed him off.

I lived in Detroit, writing for the Free Press, from 1981 to 1987. I loved the city for its grittiness; its hardworking, unassuming people; its still-vibrant music scene; and its Greek food. But even then, there was widespread denial by the auto companies as sales declined and more and more buildings were boarded up.

Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is not the first to chronicle how and why Detroit declined. But he does it originally: by focusing on the best of times. Perhaps his sympathy stems from having been born there.

In Maraniss' acclaimed bios of Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente, I was struck by his meticulous research. More, I sensed his genuine affection and sensitivity for the subject. In this bio, the main subject - this "great city" - gets no less.

Glen Macnow, a former Inquirer reporter, is coauthor with Ray Didinger of "The Ultimate Book of Sports Movies."