Capitol Park :

Tucked into downtown Detroit, Capitol Park holds a distinction few American parks can claim: it is the only city park in the country where a state's first governor rests. This local history traces the site's role in Michigan's earliest democratic life, its part on the Underground Railroad, and its long service as a streetcar and transit hub. Its brick-walled stretch, known as an urban canyon, sits one block north of the famous Coney Island restaurants.

The book also follows the park through hard years, when it stood as a visible sign of the decline that hit Detroit in the late twentieth century. It then turns to the recent efforts that have brought the area back to life in the new millennium. Across three centuries of the city's story, the author shows how one small public space rose, fell, and rose again.

Jack Dempsey, a prize-winning writer and former president of the Michigan Historical Commission, is the author of Michigan and the Civil War. Readers interested in Detroit's past, Michigan history, and urban renewal will find this account of one landmark useful.