Author John Gallagher is a veteran journalist who spent 32 years with the Detroit Free Press covering the struggles of heartland cities like Detroit. His memoir, Rust Belt Reporter, demonstrates how he came to see past the reigning narrative of Detroit as a rust belt disaster, instead reporting with growing confidence on the remarkable recovery that he saw slowly emerging in Detroit’s neighborhoods in the early years of this century. By the time Gallagher retired from full-time journalism in 2019, the urban recovery he had begun to write about 20 years earlier was finally evident for all to see. At the same time, though, his memoir records the ever-worsening saga of the newspaper industry, where layoffs and closings devastated a once mighty journalistic world. His memoir, therefore, is as much an elegy for a lost newspaper industry as it is a celebration of a triumphant urban recovery. As former U.S Congressman Dan Kildee has said, Gallagher’s book is “a poignant tribute to Detroit and the power of resolute reporting.”