Last week I reviewed Mark Binelli’s Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis. Despite the horrific descriptions of life in Detroit, I admired Binelli’s historical perspective and optimism. Charlie DeLuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy presents a darker portrait of the embattled city. You know the stories are going to be dark and twisted from the first quote in the book by Marvin Gaye: “Detroit turned out to be heaven, but it also turned out to be hell.” Charlie LeDuff finds a body frozen in ice while exploring one of Detroit’s many abandoned buildings. He travels to daily fires with Detroit’s beleaguered firefighters. Arson is rampant. At the core of Detroit’s plight is the issue of whether the current dystopia belongs solely to the city or is it the future fate of other Rust Belt cities like Buffalo and Cleveland. You can hear an interview with Charlie LeDuff here. GRADE: A