About the Book Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South. Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwests iconic city: Detroit. She has pieced together the experience of the unfree--both native and African American--in the frontier outpost of Detroit, a place wildly remote yet at the center of national and international conflict, unearthing struggles that remained hidden from view until now. Book Synopsis Prizewinning Book : The Dawn of Detroit won both the Merle Curti Prize and the James Rawley Prize, two of the top distinctions in American History Media track record : Hardcover edition attracted major national media attention and stellar reviews. Hardcover blurbs : Endorsements from the nations top historians, including Ira Berlin, Edward Baptist, and Richard White. Platform : Author has appeared on various local and syndicated National Public Radio programs and has written commentary for The New York Times , CNN In America, and the Huffington Post . Speaking : Author has lectured in a range of university and public venues, including the Smithsonians National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington DC, and the historic St. Philips African Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Affiliations : In 2011 author was selected for Ebony Magazines Power 100 and TheGrios 100 lists of African American leaders. She is also a 2011 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. Material : Includes original period imagery and maps. Review Quotes Praise for Dawn of Detroit : Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award (Nonfiction) Winner of the American Book Award Winner of the Merle Curti Social History Award Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize Finalist for the John Hope Franklin Prize Finalist for the Harriet Tubman Prize Longlisted for the Cundill History Prize A New York Times Editors Choice selection A Michigan Notable Book of 2018 A Booklist Editors Choice Title for 2017 Beautifully written and rigorously researched. . . . Throughout this riveting text, personal and family stories illustrate and advance a narrative that rewrites our understanding of slavery in the making of the United States. - 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Jury If many Americans imagine slavery essentially as a system in which black men toiled on cotton plantations, Miles upends that stereotype several times over. -- New York Times Book Review In her new, groundbreaking history. . . [Miles] has compiled documentation that does for Detroit what the Works Progress Administration and the Federal Writers Project slave narratives did for other regions, primarily the South. -- The Washington Post [Tiya Miles] is among the best when it comes to blending artful storytelling with an unwavering sense of social justice. -- Martha S. Jones in The Chronicle of Higher Education Miles account of the founding and rise of Detroit is an outstanding contribution that seeks to integrate the entirety of U.S. history, admirable and ugly, to offer a more holistic understanding of the country. -- Booklist (starred) Historian Miles ( Tales from the Haunted South ) has written a book that will reorient the focus of early slavery in North America Westward to include Detroit as central to any understanding of the tangled relations of French, English, Euro-Americans, Indians, and Africans on the frontier from the 18th to early 19th century. A necessary work of powerful, probing scholarship. -- Publisher Weekly (starred) A book likely to stand at the head of further research into the problem of Native and African-American slavery in the north country. -- Kirkus Reviews In this exemplary history that shows how slavery made early Detroit, Professor Tiya Miles demonstrates that Malcolm X (whose activist father was lynched in Michigan) was right when he insisted that all of the United States is south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Out of careful research, supple prose, deeply humane generosity to her historical subjects, and a knack for uncovering gripping family narratives, Miles has crafted a work from which any reader can learn new things. There is no finer writer among historians than Tiya Miles. -- Edward Baptist, professor, department of history, Cornell University, and author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism There is currently no historical marker acknowledging slavery in Detroit-- revealing that people were bought, sold, and held as property . . . Tiya Miles tell us in her rich account, detailing Native American and African American slavery in that city and the surrounding countryside. The Dawn of Detroit is a brilliant telling of chattel bondages long and twisted history and the evolution of race relations in the . . . City on the Straits. About the Author Tiya Miles is the recipient of a 2011 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, and is an award-winning historian and former chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African studies at the University of Michigan. She lives in Ann Arbor.