Detroit: Shambles After the Tragedy

Flying back to Detroit, it dawned on me that in these riotous times you can go home again. I was prepared for lots of deja vu. From chaos to chaos, what’s a twentyfour-year interval? In my home town, where I was born and half bred, history repeats itself first as tragedy and then again—as tragedy. July ’67 was July ’43 all over again, only worse.

Spread out over an area greater than New York City, Detroit does things on a large scale. (It used to boast of having the...