WHOSE DETROIT?
Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City

Heather Ann Thompson

Selected Comments and Reviews

"Thompson's engrossing work challenges an array of interpretations about postwar urban America, race relations, labor relations, the triumph of Reagan conservatism, and more. Essential for any collection on the history, politics, or society of post-World War II America."--Library Journal, 2002

"Heather Thompson's marvelously textured history of politics and labor in late 20th-century Detroit reminds one of the novelistic chronicles published by the late J. Anthony Lukas, whose best-selling studies of race and class never failed to foreground the individualized pain, hope, and trauma of women and men whose lives embodied all the contradictions of a deeply divided society."--Labor History, 2003

"Thompson's study is a triumph of social and political history. She connects in a most engaging style events on the street, the factory floor, and the courtroom, and convincingly shows the political realignments that have remade Detroit."-- Labour/Le Travail, 2003

"Whose Detroit? is an exceptional and well-written narrative that is worth reading for its own sake. This book is an absolute must for any study on Detroit, as it examines much of what was overlooked in Sugrue's Origin of the Urban Crisis... Thompson's book is an exceptional methodological example of social historical research which reflects the complexities of reality—and it should be held as a standard to measure excellence in research."-- Labor Studies Journal, 2005

“This is a fascinating book that makes a significant contribution to the literature.For scholars of Detroit history, it is a must read.”—H-Urban, 2002

“With engaging and accessible writing …Heather Ann Thompson carefully unfolds the larger story of structural inequity in her recent book Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City.”—Mosaic, 2004

 “Best Books of 2001”—Detroit Free Press, 2001

 “Top Five Books on City Politics”—Ostrowski’s ranking Amazon.com, 2004

"Thompson's book . . . gives us a greater sense of the complexity of racial politics in one U.S. city in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It also provides us simply with an engrossing account of a remarkable era in Detroit history."—Journal of Economic History, 2002

"Thompson illuminates themes of race, labor, and politics in Detroit's history during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, revealing much about the interplay of forces central to American life. . . . Thompson presents a vivid portrait of key courtroom battles against racial injustice. . . . This first-rate contribution to a better understanding of the dynamics shaping US cities captures the flavor and drama of the Detroit struggle. All levels and collections."--Choice, September 2002

"Thompson has spent much of her adult life researching Detroit's recent history. The result is a book that describes how a ferocious battle for control of the city took place after the 1967 riot. Her conclusion: White conservatives lost. Black liberals won."--Motor City Journal, March 22, 2002

"The author presents a study of social conflict in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, which remained unabated despite a massive infusion of Great Society programs."--Business Horizons, January-February 2003

"On July 15, 1970, James Johnson Jr., a Black autoworker at Chrysler Eldon Avenue Plant in Detroit, shot and killed two foremen and a fellow worker. . . . Historian Heather Thompson uses the incident of Johnson's triple murder, and his widely publicized trial with its controversial verdict, as a magnifying lens to examine a period of significant transformation in Detroit. . . . Thompson interweaves what was happening with the politics of the city with the situation workers faced inside the plants, and inside the structure of the union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). In Whose Detroit? Thompson interrogates both the narratives and existing interpretations on the fate of liberalism in the post–World War II period."—Against the Current, 2004

". . .detailed narrative takes an important step in moving beyond simplistic, often hostile, accounts of the impacts of 1960s liberalism and radicalism on urban American."--James J. Connolly, Ball State University, American Historical Review, April 2003

"Thompson. . . uses Detroit in the 1960s and early 1970s to consider how the battles for civil and workers rights have shaped American cities...[T]here's plenty here for readers eager to think deeply about our hometown's challenges."--Detroit Free Press, 11/26/01

“Whose Detroit? makes for a stimulating, worthy addition to an exciting and fast-growing literature” –Canadian Review of American Studies, 2003

“Heather Thompson (Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina/Charlotte) begins and ends her story about "politics, labor, and race in a modern American city," as the subtitle puts it--with the insistent, and justified, claim that Americans fail to understand Detroit at their peril”—Criticism, 2002

"A valuable addition to literature on race, labor, and urban life in postwar America. Whose Detroit ? identifies the crucial link between shop floor and labor union issues, on the one hand, and broader urban political developments on the other."--Robert H. Zieger, University of Florida

"Heather Thompson uncovers as few others have the rich variety of black community and workplace organizations in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s. Her effort to show the different responses of city leaders and union leaders to racial issues challenges the tendency either to merge these two groups or to overlook the distinctions between them."--Nancy Gabin, Purdue University

"Heather Thompson powerfully rewrites the narrative of the collapse of late-sixties liberalism and of the liberal/labor alliance. The 1967 riots were a turning point in the history of the Detroit Left, perhaps the most important radical community in the country during this period. Rather than accept the riots as a product of rising black militancy, impatience, and scapegoating of 'whitey,' Thompson argues that they played a key role in the ascendance of the Black Power movement."--Robin D. G. Kelley, New York University