Leslie Pielack tells the story of those whose lives intertwined with the Saginaw Trail, the ancient path that transformed early Michigan. The Saginaw Trail led from the frontier town of Detroit into the wilderness, weaving through towering trees and swamps to distant Native American villages. Presenting a forbidding landscape that was also a settlers' paradise, the road promised great riches in natural resources like lumber and agriculture, and a future of wheeled vehicles that would make Michigan the center of a global industry.

Chartered 18 years before Michigan's admission to the Union, Oakland County developed as a microcosm of the state: diverse, entrepreneurial, and prosperous. The unbridled success of the automotive industry in neighboring Detroit quickly spread north where well-to-do industry leaders located. This vibrant community produced a quality of life rivaled by few other places. This book displays pivotal "Then and Now" scenes depicting the history of Oakland County, many with national impact.

Stories describe Michigan's first governor, Lewis Cass, signing a treaty with the Chippewa in 1819 and resting nearby with companions under a swamp oak a few miles north of Detroit. Cass told the story of Prince Charles II, who took refuge in 1651 under a mighty oak tree after the Battle of Worcester and lived to be crowned king. Cass later designated the locality, including the southernmost townships in Oakland County, as Royal Oak. This sector became a village in 1891 and a city in 1921. Strong roots have helped the "City of Trees" maintain its viability through the years. Home to William Beaumont Hospital, assorted high-tech graphic and sound studios, and a world-class zoo, today Royal Oak draws people into its pedestrian-friendly downtown for an eclectic mix of bars, sidewalk cafs, boutiques, theaters, and upscale lofts.

Describes the struggle to shape green redevelopment in Detroit. Alesia Montgomery's Greening the Black Urban Regime: The Culture and Commerce of Sustainability in Detroit tells the story of the struggle to shape green redevelopment in Detroit. Cultural workers, envisioning a green city crafted by direct democracy, had begun to draw idealistic young newcomers to Detroit's street art and gardens. Then a billionaire developer and private foundations hired international consultants to redesign downtown and to devise a city plan. Using the justice-speak of cultural workers, these consultants did innovative outreach, but they did not enable democratic deliberation. The Detroit Future City plan won awards, and the new green venues in the gentrified downtown have gotten good press. However, low-income black Detroiters have little ability to shape "greening" as uneven development unfolds and poverty persists. Based on years of fieldwork, Montgomery takes us into the city council chambers, nonprofit offices, gardens, churches, cafés, street parties, and public protests where the future of Detroit was imagined, debated, and dictated. She begins by using statistical data and oral histories to trace the impacts of capital flight, and then she draws on interviews and observations to show how these impacts influence city planning. Hostility between blacks and whites shape the main narrative, yet indigenous, Asian, Arab, and Latinx peoples in Detroit add to the conflict. Montgomery compares Detroit to other historical black urban regimes (HBURs)—U.S. cities that elected their first black mayors soon after the 1960s civil rights movement. Critiques of ecological urbanism in HBURs typically focus on gentrification. In contrast, Montgomery identifies the danger as minoritization: the imposition of "beneficent" governance across gentrified and non-gentrified neighborhoods that treats the black urban poor as children of nature who lack the (mental, material) capacities to decide their future. Scholars and students in the social sciences, as well as general readers with social and environmental justice concerns, will find great value in this research.

The Saginaw Trail led from the frontier town of Detroit into the wilderness, weaving through towering trees and swamps to distant Native American villages. Presenting a forbidding landscape that was also a settlers' paradise, the road promised great riches in natural resources like lumber and agriculture, and a future of wheeled vehicles that would make Michigan the center of a global industry. Leslie Pielack tells the story of the ancient path that transformed early Michigan and of the people whose lives intertwined with the iconic road.

Who says you have to travel far from home to go on a great hike? In Best Hikes Detroit and Ann Arbor veteran hiker Matt Forster offers the absolute best hikes in the greater Detroit area. Each featured trail is perfect for the urban and suburbanite hard-pressed to find outdoor activities close to home. Every chapter includes up-to-date hike specs, a brief hike description, directional cues, and a detailed map.

With the powerful, rhythmic sounds of Aboriginal English and Kokatha language woven through the narrative, Mazin Grace is the inspirational story of a feisty girl who refuses to be told who she is, determined to uncover the truth for herself. Growing up on the Mission isn’t easy for clever Grace Oldman. When her classmates tease her for not having a father, she doesn’t know what to say. Pappa Neddy says her dad is the Lord God in Heaven, but that doesn’t help when the Mission kids call her a bastard. As Grace slowly pieces together clues that might lead to answers, she struggles to find a place in a community that rejects her for reasons she doesn’t understand. In this novel, author Dylan Coleman fictionalizes her mother’s childhood at the Koonibba Lutheran Mission in South Australia in the 1940s and 1950s.

Detroit's first mayor, Solomon Sibley, and his wife, Sarah (Sproat) Sibley, were responsible for organizing a group that set out in 1818 for a plot of land 30 miles north, at the confluence of the Huron River of St. Clair (now the Clinton) and several Native American trails. The future town would be named for Pontiac, the warrior chief of the Ottawa Nation, best known for his "Indian uprising" of 1763 against the British at Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac. Many of Pontiac's founding fathers were veterans of the War of 1812. They named their new streets for heroic figures of those struggles: Lawrence, Perry, and Clinton. Two years after settlement, Pontiac became the county seat for Oakland. It would also become a mill town, railroad hub, wagon and buggy manufacturing center, the site of a state asylum, and a mecca for automotive industries. Pontiac was the nation's leading manufacturer of trucks and buses, before and during the heyday of General Motors Truck and Coach division. The construction of the Pontiac Airport in 1928 only enhanced the city's role in southeast Michigan. It has long been a cultural melting pot. Today Pontiac is known as the northern Woodward Avenue terminus for the annual "Dream Cruise."