A little known fact about me: I was actually born in Detroit, not the area surrounding it, but in the city at Sinai Grace Hospital. It's a sad commentary on Detroit that my mom is very ashamed of this fact. She often emphasizes when she tells the story of my birth that her doctor had two offices (one in Detroit and one in Northville where we lived) and that the day I came the doctor just happened to be in Detroit. Often she tells me to lie about it and say I was born in Northville or Livonia, but I usually don't. I've grown up mostly in Oakland County, one of the richest counties in the state, and so my exposure to Detroit is much more limited than Charlie LeDuff's or even my dad.

My dad's family lived in Allen Park, a suburb of Detroit, until he was a freshman in high school. It was the 1970s, and everything in the city started to get a little rougher. My grandparents made to the move to Livonia where much of our family still lives. My dad can drive down old streets in his neighborhood and the city and tell you what used to be there: a bar he and his friends liked to go to, a store that sold nice suits, the convenience store where he'd run errands for his sisters for some pocket money... All I seem to see is dilapidated buildings and foreclosure signs. It may be because it is technically my birthplace or that it was once the hometown of my family, but I always get cagey when people start talking about Detroit. It seems like experts and reporters and filmmakers are all interested in finding the source of decay in the city and fixing it, but they can never seem to understand it because they aren't from here. It really isn't something that can be understood by an outsider.

Charlie LeDuff is from here. He sees the city with all its flaws and quirks and people who have been given up on but haven't seemed to give up just yet. He shows us the corruption and the incompetency of the city government in Detroit, but he also shows the underfunded and understaffed police force and firemen who persist in what seem to be hapless jobs for a city they still continue to love. Some may say that LeDuff's portrayal of Detroit is too dark, too grim, blind to the good in the city. There is good in Detroit. To me, there is nothing better than sitting the nosebleed seats with my dad at Comerica Park on a nice summer day watching the Tigers play and enjoying dinner at Lafayette's Coney Island afterwards. I love spending the day exploring the exhibits at the Detroit Institute of Art because something new seems to be revealed to me every time I go. Still, even though I love these things about the city, I know that LeDuff is right in his assessment of the city because whenever I drive home from these places all I can see is abandoned buildings with boarded up windows and graffiti. As he points out, it makes no sense to report on what's supposed to be normal like art when firefighters have boots with holes and your mayor is on trial.

Here's some the lessons I've learned in my Detroit experience. You never stop for a red light when driving home from a game or concert at night. You harden your heart when you see homeless people sitting on the street because if you give money to all of them you'd go home with nothing in your wallet. Sometimes you'll cave if they have a young kid with them, but you still never let them see how much money you have on you. When you volunteer to hand out food in the inner-city, you wear close-toed shoes because the lot and sidewalks are littered with empty syringes and glass. When you hand out said food, some of the recipients will scare you because they are high or drunk or a combination of both. Others will make you sad like the woman with two young kids who have no shoes and the old man with empty jaundiced eyes. That day of volunteering is so mentally taxing that you and your friends drive home in complete silence. You can never bring yourself to go back again.

My only real problem with the book is that I would've liked the narrative to be a little more tightly focused. Occasionally the cases and such got jumbled in my head. Still, LeDuff does what few have cared to do with Detroit: he humanizes it. He gives a face to the unemployed and the homeless and points out that they're really no different than anyone else these days. Most of all, LeDuff captures the spirit of both Detroit and Michigan in general. In Michigan, we have cold weather and a crappy economy and a slew of other problems, but we're still here. We're still standing. And so is Detroit. If I had to pick an unofficial state motto, it would be this: "Times are tough, but so are we."

Detroit: An American Autopsy is a read for both those from Detroit and those wondering where exactly the Motor City went wrong. It satisfies both the hunger for answers and the desire of a more nuanced representation of Detroit. I would like to see more books like this.