Wandering a Detroit reduced to “crackhouses and churches” with “outlaw biker Jesus” Pastor Steve.

A first-person account of an arrest:

I stared at the yellow walls and listened to a few officers talk about the overtime they were racking up, and I decided that I hated country music. I hated speedboats and shitty beer in coozies and fat bellies and rednecks. I thought about Abu Ghraib and the horror to which those prisoners were exposed. I thought about my dad and his prescience. I was glad he wasn’t alive to know about what was happening to me. I thought about my kids, and what would have happened if they had been there when I got taken away. I contemplated never flying again. I thought about the incredible waste of taxpayer dollars in conducting an operation like this. I wondered what my rights were, if I had any at all. Mostly, I could not believe I was sitting in some jail cell in some cold, undisclosed building surrounded by “the authorities.”

A ride-along with the guys tasked with demolishing the city’s 10,000 “abandoned, godforsaken homes.”

An interview with James “Jimmy” Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters which had recently been described by Attorney General Robert Kennedy as “the most powerful institution in this country—aside from the United States Government itself.”

In Detroit, the aftermath of a reality-TV SWAT raid that killed a sleeping seven-year-old.

Detroit is dying. But it’s not dead yet. Just ask Charlie LeDuff.

Wanders through the emptied post-American landscape.