Devil's Night
And Other True Tales of Detroit
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4.3 • 23 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Notable Book
On Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, some citizens of Detroit try to burn down their neighborhoods for an international audience of fire buffs. This gripping and often heartbreaking tour of the “Murder Capital of America” often seems lit by those same fires. But as a native Detroiter, Ze’ev Chafets also shows us the city beneath the crime statistics—its ecstatic storefront churches; its fearful and embittered white suburbs; its cops and criminals; and the new breed of black officials who are determined to keep Detroit running in the midst of appalling dangers and indifference.
Customer Reviews
25 years later, Bankrupt!
I remember as a radio DJ in the fall of 1988 --from a town that organized a Halloween parade in the 1920s to combat "hooliganism" --how I felt when I threw it to CBS radio on the hour and heard tales of Devils night in Detroit.
I remember thinking how bereft of any civilization that city was.
Zev's book provides an on the scene analysis of that pitiful city and it's misguided racist model of leadership which led it to bankruptcy in 2013.
It's ironic to hear stories of Detroit from 1988 and see how little it changed since then and how ineffective it's leadership was in improving its lot.
The book opines about other city and state leaders who won in 1988. I leave it to you if they had any greater impact on their jurisdictions then Mayor Young had on his.
Interesting reading again 20 years later
I went to school in Michigan, and was always fascinated by what made Detroit decline. I first read this shortly after graduating in the early - mid 2000s, when this book was less than 15 years old and at that time Chafets’ stories of Detroit mirrored how sone of my college classmates characterized Metro Detroit. 20 years later, SE Michigan has changed a lot, in many ways in a positive direction (Devils night is a historical artifact now) so it’s very interesting to compare and contrast. Worth a read.