On July 1, 1959, at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, the social psychologist Milton Rokeach brought together three paranoid schizophrenics: Clyde Benson, an elderly farmer and alcoholic; Joseph Cassel, a failed writer who was institutionalized after increasingly violent behavior toward his family; and Leon Gabor, a college dropout and veteran of World War II. The men had one thing in common: each believed himself to be Jesus Christ. Their extraordinary meeting and the two years they spent in one another’s company serves as the basis for an investigation into the nature of human identity, belief, and delusion that is poignant, amusing, and at times disturbing. Displaying the sympathy and subtlety of a gifted novelist, Rokeach draws us into the lives of three troubled and profoundly different men who find themselves “confronted with the ultimate contradiction conceivable for human beings: more than one person claiming the same identity.”

From 1900 through 1975, the city of Ypsilanti underwent a multitude of changes as it developed from a small farming community into a center of education and business. The rise of the automobile and the insurgence of auto manufacturing, the progress of local arts and theater, the opening of the Bomber Plant at Willow Run, and the transformation of a teachers' college into Eastern Michigan University are just a few of these historic developments. This book, a companion to Ypsilanti: A History in Pictures, chronicles Ypsilanti's magnificent growth throughout the twentieth century, and the celebrated people, places, and events that helped shape the city as it is known today.

Ypsilanti, Michigan, home to Eastern Michigan University, is a small city where a great deal happens. This is a community with a strong sense of history and historic preservation. Homes and buildings about to fall in on themselves in the 1960s were preserved and restored and have found new uses today. It is a place of festivals, parades, concerts, and performances. There have been problems and turmoil, such as the time when the president of Eastern Michigan University needed a new house, but in each instance the people of Ypsilanti have come through stronger than before. Here, local historian James Mann shares why the people of Ypsilanti take pride in their city.

Vols. [9] and [11] contain inverted and v. [13] has appended, directory of Ypsilanti.

Between the summers of 1967 through 1969, a predatory killer stalked the campuses of Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan seeking prey until he made the mistake of killing his last victim in the basement of his uncle's home. All-American boy John Norman Collins was arrested, tried, and convicted of the strangulation murder of Karen Sue Beineman. The other murders never went to trial, with one exception, and soon became cold cases. With the benefit of fifty years of hindsight, hundreds of vintage newspaper articles, thousand of police reports, and countless interviews, Fournier tells the stories of the other victims, recreates the infamous trial that took Collins off the streets, and details Collins's time spent in prison.