From February 2013 to November 2014, I visited Detroit six times, for a total of 77 days. After three years in Brooklyn, I found in Detroit what I was looking for when I crossed the Atlantic for the first time: space, both physical and imaginative. It took me only two days to decide to write my first book. A work driven by practical and emotional necessity, it speaks of the city through a series of encounters with its inhabitants. Over the course of two years, I collected stories, ideas, and visions in a context I can only describe as an urban resistance movement. I trained my eyes to an abandoned landscape, where great blocks of ruins alternate with sky, and I discovered that fear and fascination with decay quickly fade into the background. They become the underlying layer upon which to test a more attentive level of vision, a gaze more akin to listening, capable of sensing the energy generated when determination and potential meet. I asked an artist, Antonio Rovaldi, to accompany me and illustrate this journey. This is the result of our work. (F.B.)