Gang Leader For A Day – A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh

This is NOT one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. I came across this after reading Freakonomics. That book has a chapter on Venkatesh and his economic analysis of selling crack. This book goes into much more detail about how things work in both a crack selling gang and project housing on the South Side of Chicago. Venkatesh spends much of 10 years with a gang leader named JT and a group of other people in the Robert Taylor projects. The book was very good because it wasn’t preachy and had no agenda. He describes in detail life in the projects and in a gang, how things get done, how disputes are resolved, etc. I could not put this down.

Chris Bo in Austin