A few books capture different sides of Detroit better than any guidebook can.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002) is the great Detroit novel — three generations of a Greek-American family from Smyrna to Grosse Pointe, with the 1967 riots, the auto industry, and the city's geography woven into the story. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas J. Sugrue (1996) is the standard academic history of how Detroit went from the country's wealthiest large city in 1950 to its most troubled. Dense but essential for understanding what the city has been recovering from.
Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff (2013) is the loud, profane, on-the-ground account of the bankruptcy years by a Detroit-born journalist. Funny and brutal in turn; not the official version.
The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow (1954) follows an Appalachian family who migrate to Detroit during World War II so the husband can take a job in the war plants. The dislocation is the subject. A classic of American working-class fiction.
Devil's Night by Ze'ev Chafets (1990) — and the documentary it inspired — is dated now but captures the city in its lowest stretch. Read alongside something more recent for context.