The demise of Detroit has been well chronicled, the subject of much heated debate in our public discourse today. With this book, we have testimony from someone who has lived his whole life in the city. But instead of dwelling on the economic and political debate surrounding his home, the author has chosen instead to simply offer an account of growing up and living in the Detroit over the last sixty years, watching as it crumbled from an industrial empire to the verge of bankruptcy. A sparkling mine of colorful stories about the city's pimps, drugs, and cops, Shomari's book sheds light on what it was like to be a "city slicker" on the streets of the Motor City.

Written in first-person prose throughout, the author begins with childhood memories: lying in bed with braces on his feet due to being pigeon-toed, through his boyhood love of cars and guns, and later his job for the electric company. Throughout, the book is peppered with Bible verses that serve as a sort of spiritual commentary on the events, some of them painful, he has seen and experienced. Along the way, Shomari shares his recollections of his school days, his insights on the City's weather ("there are only two seasons - winter and July") and the importance of always looking fashionable on the streets. The book can be difficult to read at times, due solely to the author's resistance to paragraph breaks; however, Shomari has a compelling set of reminiscences about growing up in Detroit when it was still the Big D; it's a voice that deserves to be heard.

Detroit R.I.P is one man's story of survival in one of the roughest, toughest cities in the world. It should be favorably received by readers nostalgic about the glory days of a once-thriving American industrial hub.

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