'Detective, there's a.there's a BOOK here to see you. I'd just finished reading the daily rag and was throwing it in the trash when there was a knock at my door. It was a cold morning the fog had settled in low over the city and the mood on the street was grim as always. He lives with his wife and daughter near Detroit, Michigan. LeDuff received a bachelor of arts degree in political science from the University of Michigan and a master of journalism degree from the University of California at Berkeley. He speaks decent Spanish and bad Russian. He lived in a tree house in Alaska and slept on the Great Wall of China. Previously, LeDuff, 42, has worked as a carpenter, middle school teacher and gang counselor in Detroit, a bartender in Australia and a baker in Denmark.

“US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man” (Penguin Press) “Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts” (Penguin Press) There, he encounters Nazi youth, a porno director, a Christian housewife, the town good-time girl, the angry Mexican gardener and other all-stars of American life. LeDuff also hosted and co-produced “United Gates of America” for the BBC in 2006 where he moved into a gated city at the edge of the Los Angeles sprawl.

Among other things he brawled at a fight party held by an Oakland motorcycle gang, rode a bull at a gay rodeo, became a trapeze clown in a traveling circus of immigrants. In 2005 LeDuff was host and writer of “Only In America” – a 10-part television show of participatory journalism for the Discovery Times Channel. He covered the war in Iraq, crossed the desert with a group of migrant Mexicans and worked inside a North Carolina slaughterhouse as part of The Times series “How Race Is Lived in America,” which was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He is a former national correspondent for The New York Times. Charlie LeDuff is a writer, filmmaker and a multimedia reporter for The Detroit News.

Detroit by Charlie LeDuff