Reviewed by: Becoming the Motor City: A Timeline of Detroit's Auto Industry by Paul Vachon Kevin Moskowitz Paul Vachon. Becoming the Motor City: A Timeline of Detroit's Auto Industry. St. Louis, Missouri: Reedy Press, 2021. Pp. 176. Appendix. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Photos. Hardcover: $39.95. There is no shortage of history books aimed at the general automobile enthusiast. These books, which often cater to the expert category of readers, often offer more nostalgic fodder than serious historical narrative or analysis. Freelance writer Paul Vachon's Becoming the Motor City: A Timeline of Detroit's Auto Industry does not, from an academic point of view, reinvent the wheel. However, as a history of Detroit and its core industry, Vachon breaks away from the trappings that usually befall "buff books" about automotive history. Instead, the author threads a fine line between engaging a general audience with approachable topics and offering the reader insightful commentary into a history that is, as he puts it, "astonishingly complex." Becoming the Motor City is divided into two sections. The first, and larger share of the book's contents, is a chronologically organized nine-chapter narrative, extending from Detroit's late-nineteenth-century position as a regional steel manufacturing hub to the post-bailout 2010s. This composition is heavily weighted towards the early years of Detroit's automobile production, with six chapters covering roughly the industry's origins through the end of World War II while the remaining three chapters cover a similar span of time through the present. Each chapter opens with a wide overview of the cultural, political, or economic landscape before narrowing into smaller narratives, usually only a few paragraphs in length. Vachon breaks chapters into short entries that generally focus on one of four subjects: important [End Page 99] people, pivotal events, noteworthy models of automobiles, and occasionally places of note. The final section of Becoming the Motor City contains an epilogue speculating on future forms of mobility, a catalogue of various defunct automotive marques native to the region, and an appendix listing every model produced by Detroit's "Big Three." In this sense, Becoming the Motor City is a history of two discrete things: the American automobile industry and the city of Detroit. However, Vachon's general theme is that Detroit's relationship with the automobile industry forged an inseparable link between the two. The auto industry is at once a source of pride and immense wealth for the denizens of the Motor City, but also the root of the many problems that have long plagued Detroit, and more broadly, American society. For a concrete example, Vachon suggests that the success of "Bomber Road," the highway built to shuttle workers to Ford's Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti during World War II, geared the Detroit automakers to abandon construction of new factories within the city limits and place them exclusively in the suburbs, precipitating the decline of the urban core. This in turn paved the way for interstate highway development both in southeast Michigan and across the country. Documenting the continent's largest industry over the span of 140 years is no small feat, and Paul Vachon makes the most of 133 picture-laden pages. However, it might have made for a more balanced narrative if the speculative epilogue and appendix were sacrificed for a few additional chapters to fill out the post-war history of Detroit. Most troublingly, Vachon attempts to squeeze forty years (1960–2000) into a single chapter which fails to fully document the decline of the industry in the last two decades of the twentieth century, nor many of the attempts to breathe life into a city struggling with the consequences of sprawl. The impact of foreign competition, rampant cost-cutting, and changing consumer tastes on both the automobile industry and the Detroit region is underdeveloped and forces the reader to fill in large historical gaps. Geographically limiting the scope of automotive history to the Motor City also leaves some odd-shaped edges. While Detroit, even in the early years of motorization, clearly served as a central hub for manufacturing, engineering, and automotive culture, important influences from across the United States contributed significantly to the motorization...

"Worse than a Rebel": Racial Perceptions of Michigan's Civil War Soldiers Travis Faustin (bio) On January 14, 1862, John Bebee of Clinton County, Michigan, wrote a letter to his brother Nelson.1 Both Bebee brothers were enlisted men; John was an infantryman in the Fifth Michigan Volunteer Infantry and Nelson was a member of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry. John's letter to his brother began ordinarily enough for Civil War correspondence. Writing from St. Joseph's Hospital in Central Park, New York, John relayed to Nelson that his health was improving and he hoped Nelson never witnessed as hard of times as John had while soldiering. John then bluntly insisted that Nelson "must kill every damn niger that [he gets] a chance to" before informing him that "the folks were well when they wrote."2 Unfortunately, Nelson's reply to John's racially charged line did not survive in the archival record. One would hope the statement was some kind of dark humor and not an actual request for his brother to murder innocent freedpeople. However, even if interpreted as "humor" the question remains why the murder of African Americans would have been amusing to the two Michigan brothers. Historians can read Bebee's racist statement as just that: a racist remark. But what did he really mean? Had he, himself, perpetrated violence against African Americans and now encouraged his brother to do the same? Although there is no evidence to prove this, his statement suggested he would not be opposed to it, which calls into question his own racial perceptions. Based on the actions of other Michigan soldiers, the perpetration of violence and harassment against African Americans was not uncommon; in fact, such prejudice and racism seethed from the pages of letters and diaries written by Michigan soldiers during the Civil War. It is estimated that over 90,000 Michiganders enlisted during the war, which equated to just under 25% of the state's male population at the time.3 Of these [End Page 29] 90,000 men, we can assume that most, if not all of them, wrote letters back home to their families.4 Although it is unknown how many of these letters made their way into the archival record, the ones that did can give modern historians a glimpse into the minds of Michigan's Civil War soldiers. This study utilizes letters from thirteen unique letter collections in an effort to piece together the racial perceptions and attitudes of Michigan soldiers during the American Civil War. This study is neither all-encompassing or representative of the whole population of Union soldiers. It is, however, an entry point for further study on the racial attitudes of Michiganders in the mid-nineteenth century. Analyzing the racial perceptions and attitudes of Michigan soldiers during the Civil War is crucial to forming a more accurate narrative of Michigan's racial history during the conflict. The Michigan men who enlisted to fight for the Union came from a state where, as popular history proclaims, abolitionist sentiments were prominently featured in society. Despite coming from Michigan, however, the evidence suggests that a majority of Civil War soldiers from the state still thought of freedpeople in prejudicial and racist terms. Few of the Michigan soldiers highlighted here thought positively about the various African Americans they came into contact with, and even fewer went out of their way to assist freedpeople. Bebee's statement was only part of what appears to have been a trend among other Michigan soldiers. Amid the discussions of camp life, politics, and battles, their writings hint at their attitudes and interactions in regards to freedpeople. Bebee's call to violence signaled his attitudes toward African Americans. Solely from that remark, one can only imagine the injustices freedpeople may have endured when they came into contact with him. However, in Bebee's case there is no way for historians to know for sure; any such events or interactions are not recorded in the historical record, and can therefore only be considered potential historical events that may have had a negative impact on freedpeople. Nevertheless, uncovering evidence of the racial perceptions of Michigan Civil War soldiers still offers a clearer...

The National Reach of the Associated Press and American Public Opinion: The News in Metropolitan New York, Small-Town Kalamazoo, and Rural Copper Country Anna Bundt (bio) The invention of telegraphy and establishment of news wire services heavily altered communication in the nineteenth century. Moreover, these had a profound impact on the newspaper market and the gathering, distribution, and circulation of news. Through the new technology, newspapers—and the journalists behind them—were able to cover larger areas in a shorter amount of time. Additionally, it allowed outlets to give more attention to national and international affairs, so that the news shifted away from centering on solely local concerns.1 The changes introduced also prompted another development: the establishment of collective news gathering through news associations or agencies. During the second half of the nineteenth century, news agencies increasingly formed to share the cost of gathering and covering the news. The first such cooperative in the US was the Associated Press (AP), founded by five daily New York newspapers in 1846 to split costs covering the US-Mexican War. Over the course of the century, the AP established itself not only as the major news agency in the Northeast US but also expanded to the Midwest and western frontier. By 1900, it served as the primary news proprietor in the country and, as Menahem Blondheim argues, acted as a “‘giant funnel,’ channeling news from all over the country into its own offices”—and eventually from around the world, too.2 Blondheim speculates that in the late nineteenth century around 13,000,000 readers of newspapers read AP dispatches; they thus held tremendous power over knowledge and public opinion by essentially being a “monopoly of knowledge” with “exclusive possession of the confluence of news in America—local, national, and international—before it reached anyone else.”3 [End Page 63] As such a monopoly of knowledge, the AP held power “to determine the entire world view of a people: to produce . . . an official view of reality which can constrain and control human action,” hence to “‘create and define the world’ for the American public.”4 An analysis of coverage surrounding the 1898 Spanish-American War in variously sized newspapers suggests that the AP did not just impact the press in urban, metropolitan areas such as New York City, but that it had already reached even further into small towns and rural newspapers far away from those centers: including Michigan. In particular, examining and comparing coverage surrounding the infamous explosion of the American battleship USS Maine on February 15, 1898, in three different papers—the New York Times, Kalamazoo Telegraph, and Copper Country Evening News (Calumet, Michigan)—reveals that all three outlets, whether located in the center or periphery, and whether openly disclosing their membership in the AP (or if they were members at all), all nevertheless relied on, printed, distributed, and circulated similar—and at times even the same—news reports to their readers.5 Surely, then, American public opinion from urban centers to peripheral small towns of different sizes was heavily influenced by the news agency’s reporting, which seems to have formed the basic knowledge of particular events as well as provided a frame of interpreting the entire conflict for a majority of Americans. Yet news associations and their impact on public opinion have received little attention in the existing historiography. While scholars have produced chronological histories of the American press and journalism in the United States, or the development of the press and newspaper in the second half of the nineteenth century, the study of the technology involved in news gathering and transmission—namely telegraphy and news wire services—tends only to [End Page 64] figure in more recent, post-1950 narratives.6 However, as early as 1930 Victor Rosewater undertook a groundbreaking study of cooperative news-gathering in the US, paving the way for more pioneering works.7 Besides enriching our understanding of how journalism and the printed press technically worked and were transformed by telegraphy, especially after 1850, these works also demonstrated how these technological advances aided the process of commercialization and professionalization in news gathering, distribution, coverage, and circulation—prompting scholarship in adjacent fields such as...

“The DNA of the Community”: The Detroit Jewish News and Detroit Jewish Chronicle Digital Archive Mike O. Smith (bio) This year marks the ten-year anniversary of the most important online documentary collection for the study of Detroit’s Jewish community, as well as a great resource regarding the history of Jewish America and the Motor City at large: the digital archive of the Detroit Jewish News (1942–present) and the Detroit Jewish Chronicle (1916–1951). The catalyst for creation of this resource was a devasting fire. On the evening of January 27, 2002, just as Arthur Horwitz—publisher of the Detroit Jewish News—and his wife, Gina, were about to go out to dinner, he received a call from Brigette Thompson, the newspaper’s business and systems manager. She had an urgent message and a request. Smoke detector alarms were sounding at the Jewish News offices, and she asked Horwitz: “Can you stop by the building?” The Southfield fire department had already been notified and was on its way.1 When the Horwitzes arrived, they witnessed a nightmarish scene: a “sea of flashing light” with “flames shooting through the roof of the building.” It was a devastating fire. Phone calls were made to Detroit Jewish News editor Robert Sklar, information technology director Greg Day, controller Craig Phipps, and other leaders of the newspaper. They soon arrived on the scene and, with Horwitz, watched the Jewish News offices burn to the ground, completely destroyed by the fire. As the Jewish News editors and administrators viewed the devastation, however, they were also planning: after losing almost all their equipment and files, how would they ever be able to publish the next issue of the newspaper? In a dramatic episode, much like a Hollywood movie, the fifty-six staff members returned to the job of producing the weekly Jewish News, although this time with a bit of additional, unplanned urgency. A mere ten hours after the first flames of the devastating fire, the production of that week’s edition began in earnest. [End Page 35] The Southfield Embassy Suites hotel generously offered its ballroom as a short-term, temporary headquarters for the Jewish News. The empty room became the newspaper’s editorial and design facility, but Horwitz reminded the staff of one essential ingredient for any journal: “You are the Jewish News.” In its time of need, community supporters—along with local Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and businesses—rushed to provide the Jewish News with the necessary tools to produce a newspaper. Agencies such as the Jewish Federation of Detroit and JARC (a nonprofit organization for adults with disabilities) provided computers, fax machines, phones, a paper waxer, and other crucial supplies. As the staff worked nonstop, food was catered to the ballroom. There were advertisements to be recalled and reconstructed, pages to be designed and laid out again, and stories that needed rewrites. This included a new cover story, complete with photos, about the latest breaking news: a devastating fire at the offices of the Detroit Jewish News! To publish that week’s issue was a remarkable feat, but there was a caveat. For the first and last time in its eighty-one-year history, the Jewish News was published one day late. Regarding this remarkable recovery, Horwitz wrote to readers, “The efforts of our entire staff were incredible. . . . In a crunch, they delivered. This week, we may have soot in our hair, a smoky stench in our clothes and fatigue in our bodies, but it will take more than a devastating fire for us to pass on the opportunity to be a part of your lives every week.” Miraculously, back issues of the Jewish News survived the blaze. Although the bound volumes were covered with ashy residue from the fire, they remained intact without damage to the pages. Arguably, the single most important documentary resource for Detroit Jewish history in the twentieth century was nearly lost. This close call was an epiphany for Horwitz, and it spurred the beginning of his twelve-year quest to preserve back issues of the Jewish News for posterity. It is a saga with a happy ending for historians, researchers, students, and writers. The Detroit...