Alex Massie Alex Massie

Motor City Woe

Michigan native Amy Sullivan on the latest scandal in the Motor City:

Monica Conyers, Detroit councilwoman and wife* of House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, pled guilty today in a bribery case and now faces five years in prison. Conyers is only in her first term on the council, but had already previously made headlines for threatening to shoot a mayoral staffer, [and] accusing then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick of rigging her office chair to electrocute her…

Kilpatrick, of course, is in jail himself these days. A book I’d like to read: a social, industrial, political and cultural history of Detroit, 1920-2009. It’s a fascinating, if not melancholy and tragic tale that deserves a proper treatment. Maybe it’s been written: can readers recommend any particular history of Detroit? Among American cities perhaps only Los Angeles has as interesting – and as tellingly symbolic – a story over the course of the last 80 years or so…

*She’s 44; he’s 80.

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