The Enduring Legacy of the Detroit Athletic Club: Driving the Motor City by Ken Voyles and Mary Rodrique (review)

152 The Michigan Historical Review Ken Voyles and Mary Rodrique. The Enduring Legacy of the Detroit Athletic Club: Driving the Motor City. Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2012. Pp. 160. Bibliography. Index. Photographs. Paper, $19.99. This work represents an updated rendition of Voyles’s previous coauthored history of the Detroit Athletic Club (DAC), which was published in 2001 and covered similar ground. The current version contains 20 brief topical chapters that detail the origins and decline of the club; its transition from an athletic to a social organization; the club’s renaissance; and, to a lesser extent, the city itself during the past 125 years. The authors position the DAC as central to the economic and social life of Detroit. Given that the membership after World War I included the titans of the auto industry and many of Detroit’s other entrepreneurs, such an argument might be considered obvious. The importance of the DAC to the city’s athletic and recreational life is more debatable. The contention that the DAC “invented” sports in Detroit (p. 10) lacks thorough substantiation. The book is aimed at the general public, and to that extent it provides an informative, chronological, and descriptive narrative of the major events in the club’s history as well as brief biographical vignettes of the DAC’s key personnel. The authors are at their best in chapters 11-16, which present the economic influences of World War II on the club, as well as the efforts of DAC members during the war. A bevy of excellent photographs complement the text. Scholars will be disappointed at the book’s lack of documentation, very limited and largely dated secondary bibliographical sources, repetitious material, speculative and overly generalized conclusions to most chapters, unasked questions, and factual errors. Although The Enduring Legacy of the Detroit Athletic Club clearly focuses on the club’s elite membership, there is little contextualization or attention paid to gender, race, and social class. There is a brief mention of servants’ quarters and the demolition of two apartment buildings to increase parking spaces for club members, yet no inquiry into or consideration of what happened to the displaced residents. Readers are not informed of the club’s first African American member (1979) until page 142 and the first female member (1986) until page 143. It is only hinted that Jacob Mazer, the Jewish star and founder of the original DAC basketball team, was not invited to join the reorganized club due to his ethnicity in 1915. Among several factual errors that mar the text, the authors contend that a growing popular interest in track and field due to the Book Reviews 153 establishment of the modern Olympic Games spurred the formation of the DAC (p. 11); but the Olympics initiated competition in 1896, nine years after the founding of the club. The YMCA invented basketball in 1891 (not 1892), and the first championship of the American Bowling Congress was held in 1901 (not 1902). The contention that 80 percent of Detroit residents were cyclists in the late nineteenth century (p. 45) begs for substantiation and is highly unlikely given the cost of bicycles at that time. While the authors provide a useful introduction to the subject, social historians will find this book only a starting point for additional research. Gerald R. Gems North Central College Susan Whitall, with Kevin John. Fever: Little Willie John, a Fast Life, Mysterious Death, and the Birth of Soul. London, UK: Titan Publishing Group, 2011. Pp. 210. Bibliography. Discography. Photographs. Cloth, $25.99. William Edward John, known professionally as Little Willie John, was among the first African American performers from Detroit to make the successful transition from gospel to soul singing. Soul was the commercial genre that transplanted the ecstatic moans, shouting, and wailing of black church music into secular songs about relationships, love, and hard times. The diminutive John found success in 1955, when he was still in his teens. His rich tenor voice and superb vocal control belied his youth, while in later years his boyish looks and slight frame contrasted with his rich and worldly wise singing. John produced six national hit records and prospered into the 1960s. Gradually...