“Detroit: A Motor City History”, by David Lee Poremba

160 pages, Arcadia Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-0738524351

On July 24^th, 1701, Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac stood in the heart of the wilderness on a bluff overlooking the Detroit River and claimed this frontier in the name of Louis XIV by founding the trading post of Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, later to become the city of Detroit; thus began the story of Detroit, a city marked by pioneering spirits, industrial acumen, and uncommon durability, all of it documented in Detroit: A Motor City History by David Lee Poremba (part of The Making of America Series). While Detroit is known worldwide as the City that Put the World on Wheels, what is not widely known is that, prior to the birth of the automobile, a tremendous diversity of manufactured goods transformed Detroit from a frontier town into a great industrial city. What is also not widely known is that, over the course of its 300+ year history, Detroit has been sculpted into a city unique in the American experience by its extraordinary mixture of diverse cultures: American Indian, French, British, American colonial, and a variety of immigrant newcomers.

Poremba documents the major events that shaped this once-small French fur-trading outpost across three centuries of conflict and prosperity. Through a collection of remarkable images that are among the oldest of the city, all linked by informative text, Detroit is revealed as a thriving, bustling manufacturing town that served as the world’s leader in a number of important industries. Readers experience firsthand the struggles of the nascent village against raiding Indian tribes and the incessant political and military tug of war between the colonial French and English, and then American interests. Bessemer steel, iron, steel rails, freight cars, stoves, lumber, drugs and cigars are just a few of the products that helped the city build the capital that was later needed to prosper during the automobile era. Detroit played a pivotal role in establishing the country’s economic and industrial power in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, serving as a center for its well-known civilian and military mass-production resources.

Detroit: A Motor City History examines it all from the foundation through the modern day, and its evolution into a leading industrial center of the Midwest. This visual history provides insight into Detroit’s rapid evolution from a hamlet into a metropolis against a backdrop of important community and national affairs: the decimating fire of 1805, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, both world wars, the industrial dominance of the 50s, the riots of the 60s, the decline of the 70s and the unknown future shown in the 80s.