A quite extraordinary documentation of how the American dream is founded on a nightmare. ( )

This is an amazing yet very depressing book. Camilo José Vergara has set out to record the decline of America's inner cities through photgraphs. I have lived through part of the decay in the city of Detroit. His photos and descriptions there are particularly poignant to me.

One sees the inexorable decline as neighborhoods lose home through fire and abandonment, ultimately from hopelessness, despair, and crime. Some of the buildings left are heavily fortified with bars, and new buildings with no first story windows. Streets look forlorn devoid of most activity. Little effort can be made in most of these places to save the architectural jewels that are scattered around. It is almost that American urban life is irredeemable. And the signs of creativity and rebirth are few outside of Harlem.

Vergara has mostly focused on Detroit of the five (once) large American rust belt cities which have lost over half their population since 1950: Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. There is a picture of the abandoned Hough neighborhood in Cleveland. St. Louis is the one of this group that is beginning a population turn around, and Pittsburgh has the healthiest looking downtown. So there is scattered glimmer of hope -- maybe. ( )