Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit by Michael H. Hodges (review)

128 The Michigan Historical Review Michael H. Hodges. Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2018. Pp. 240. Index. Illustrations. Notes. Cloth: $39.99. Anyone with a passing interest in architecture in Detroit knows the name Albert Kahn. From iconic skyscrapers like the Fisher Building— “Detroit’s largest art object”—to the industrial palaces of the Packard Plant and Ford’s Highland Park Plant, and from private residences to commercial buildings and public institutions, Kahn’s work is pervasive in the city. Yet Kahn’s contribution extends far beyond his status as the “architect of Detroit.” He designed buildings across the United States, Canada, and overseas, inspiring the pioneers of modernism in Europe. In his introduction to Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit, Michael Hodges notes that, despite the emergence of new sources covering Kahn’s life and work in recent years, “the world still awaits a comprehensive academic biography of the architect” (p. x). While Hodges acknowledges that this is not that book, he aims to fill the gap with an “accessible introduction for the nonarchitect, nonacademic layperson.” Hodges follows a roughly chronological format, from Kahn’s origins in Europe, his family’s early struggles after emigrating to Detroit, and his apprenticeship with the Detroit firm Mason and Rice, to his mature career, which continued at full speed until the day he died. Along the way, Hodges delves more deeply into some less well-known areas of Kahn’s life and work, including his complicated relationship with his Jewish identity and how it affected his interactions with anti-Semitic clients, most notably Henry Ford; his work in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s; and his involvement in the public turmoil following the unveiling of Diego Rivera’s now-iconic murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Particularly valuable is the chapter on Kahn’s influence on the birth of modernist architecture, especially Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius— ironic since Kahn famously denounced the nascent modernist architectural movement before his death in 1942. Despite Hodges’s disclaimer that this is a nonacademic book, he meticulously cites a wide range of sources, including primary sources such as letters and contemporary newspaper articles, supplemented by previous biographies of Kahn and other contextual materials. Although Kahn left a rich archive of public speeches and writings, he appeared to keep his private thoughts well-guarded. Hodges draws on the few letters that survive, as well as the reminiscences of family members, but he Book Reviews 129 occasionally veers onto shakier ground in speculating about Kahn’s private thoughts and opinions. Building the Modern World is richly illustrated with historic photographs, Kahn’s renderings, and images from Hodges’s own extensive collection of photography. Hodges confesses that he does not utilize Photoshop or other photo editing software, and the book is almost always the better for it. Aside from a few images with deep shadows that detract from, rather than enhance, their subject, the photos show Kahn’s buildings realistically, as they would be seen by Detroit’s residents and visitors. Hodges’s work is insightful while remaining accessible, an enjoyable introduction to the life and legacy of Albert Kahn in Detroit. Ruth E. Mills Senior Architectural Historian Quinn Evans Architects, Ann Arbor Gerald Horne. The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett’s Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. Pp. 279. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paper: $24.95. Claude Barnett’s Associated Negro Press (ANP) was far more than an ordinary wire service; rather, it was, recounts Gerald Horne, black press historian and author of the latest and most comprehensive treatment of Barnett’s legacy, “the most ambitious black press institution in the country before the advent of Johnson Publishing” (p. 5). The ANP not only served over 250 black press newspapers across the United States and Africa, it also forged important connections with leading black intellectuals of the time including the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins, author Langston Hughes, and professor W. E. B. DuBois and served as the proving ground for some of the black press’s most accomplished career journalists...