Hardstuff: 2the Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young

In his inimitably vinegary colloquial style, Young, the five-term mayor of Detroit, reflects on his eventful life and forthrightly defends his controversial stewardship of America's blackest city. Writing with Wheeler (coauthor of I Had a Hammer ), he recalls his boyhood in Detroit's overcrowded, hustling black east side, his battle against racism in the Army, his rise in the union movement and his vigorous resistance against the House Un-American Activities Committee. He blames the postwar decline of Detroit on misguided federal industrial policy, superhighway construction, blockbusting and white racism. After a scarring 1967 race riot, Young, a state legislator, was elected mayor in 1972 on a platform calling for a ``people's police department.'' Describing Detroit as a ``condensed, microcosmic, accelerated version of Everycity, U.S.A.,'' he convincingly presents himself as a pragmatic radical whose primary concern is the high unemployment rate in his city, and he maintains that his prideful black rhetoric does not obscure his longtime call for racial unity. He argues that Detroit must reconnect with its suburbs, and if his claim that black-governed Detroit has achieved ``a level of autonomy . . . no other city can match'' sounds self-serving, this still remains a valuable book on urban issues. (Feb.)