At the start of 1932, the nation's worst economic crisis has left one-in-four workers without a job, countless families facing eviction, banks shutting down as desperate depositors withdraw their savings, and growing social and political unrest. Amid this turmoil, a political decision looms that will determine the course of the nation. It's a choice between two men with very different visions of America: Incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover and New York's Democratic Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Veteran journalist Scott Martelle provides a gripping narrative retelling of that vitally significant year as social and political systems struggled under the weight of the devastating Dust Bowl, economic woes, rising political protests, and growing demand for the repeal of Prohibition. That November, voters overwhelmingly rejected decades of Republican rule and backed Roosevelt and his promise to redefine the role of the federal government while putting the needs of the people ahead of the wishes of the wealthy.
Deftly told, this illuminating work spotlights parallel events from that pivotal year and brings to life figures who made headlines in their time but have been largely forgotten today. Ultimately, it is the story of a nation that, with the help of a leader determined to unite and inspire, took giant steps toward a new America.
In the decade before the onset of the Civil War, groups of Americans engaged in a series of longshot-and illegal-forays into Mexico, Cuba, and other Central American countries in hopes of taking them over. These efforts became known as filibustering, and their goal was to seize territory to create new independent fiefdoms, which would ultimately be annexed by the still-growing United States. Most failed miserably.
William Walker was the outlier. Short, slender, and soft-spoken with no military background-he trained as a doctor before becoming a lawyer and then a newspaper editor-Walker was an unlikely leader of rough-hewn men and adventurers. But in 1856 he managed to install himself as president of Nicaragua. Neighboring governments saw Walker as a risk to the region and worked together to drive him out-efforts aided, incongruously, by the United States' original tycoon, Cornelius Vanderbilt.
William Walker's Wars is a story of greedy dreams and ambitions, the fate of nations and personal fortunes, and the dark side of Manifest Destiny, for among Walker's many goals was to build his own empire based on slavery. This little-remembered story from U.S. history is a cautionary tale for all who dream of empire.
When we think of Detroit, we think first of the auto industry and its slow, painful decline, then maybe the sounds of Motown, or the long line of professional sports successes. But economies are made up of people, and the effect of the economic downfall of Detroit is one of the most compelling stories in America.
Detroit: A Biography by journalist and author Scott Martelle is about a city that rose because of the most American of traits-innovation, entrepreneurship, and an inspiring perseverance. It's about the object lessons learned from the city's collapse, and most prosaically, it's about what happens when a nation turns its back on its own citizens.
The story of Detroit encompasses compelling human dimensions, from the hope it once posed for blacks fleeing slavery in the early 1800s and then rural Southern poverty in the 1920s, to the American Dream it represented for waves of European immigrants eager to work in factories bearing the names Ford, Chrysler, and Chevrolet. Martelle clearly encapsulates an entire city, past and present, through the lives of generations of individual citizens. The tragic story truly is a biography, for the city is nothing without its people.
"Former Detroit News reporter Martelle vividly recounts the rise and downfall of a once-great city...An informative albeit depressing glimpse of the workings of a once-great city that is now a shell of its former self."-Publishers Weekly
When we think of Detroit, we think first of the auto industry and its slow, painful decline, then maybe the sounds of Motown, or the long line of professional sports successes. But economies are made up of people, and the effect of the economic downfall of Detroit is one of the most compelling stories in America.
Detroit: A Biography by journalist and author Scott Martelle is about a city that rose because of the most American of traits-innovation, entrepreneurship, and an inspiring perseverance. It's about the object lessons learned from the city's collapse, and most prosaically, it's about what happens when a nation turns its back on its own citizens.
The story of Detroit encompasses compelling human dimensions, from the hope it once posed for blacks fleeing slavery in the early 1800s and then rural Southern poverty in the 1920s, to the American Dream it represented for waves of European immigrants eager to work in factories bearing the names Ford, Chrysler, and Chevrolet. Martelle clearly encapsulates an entire city, past and present, through the lives of generations of individual citizens. The tragic story truly is a biography, for the city is nothing without its people.
