Gang Leader for a Day, Sudhir Venkatesh
Gang Leader for a Day, Sudhir Venkatesh
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Gang Leader for a Day

Author: Sudhir Venkatesh

Narrator: Reg Rogers, Stephen J. Dubner

Unabridged: 8 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 01/10/2008

Synopsis

The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entrée into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment.When Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. A first-year grad student, he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of the next decade inside the projects under JT's protection, documenting what he saw there. Over the next seven years, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack selling business, conducted PR within their community, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure. Gang Leader for a Day is an inside view into the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone. It is also the story of a complicated friendship between two young and ambitious men, a universe apart.

About Sudhir Venkatesh

Sudhir Venkatesh is professor of sociology at Columbia University. He has written extensively about American poverty. He is currently working on a project comparing the urban poor in France and the United states. His writings, stories, and documentaries have appeared in The American Prospect, This American Life, the Source, and on PBS and national Public Radio.

About Stephen J. Dubner

Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author, journalist, and radio and TV personality. He quit his first career—as an almost rock star—to become a writer. He has since taught English at Columbia, worked for The New York Times, and published three non-Freakonomics books.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Carmen on November 28, 2020

This author is a moron. Even after spending years in the projects, he still doesn't know how things work. I was really blown away by his naivety and lack of common sense. He's surprised that gangs use violence. He's surprised when he finds out the gang has dealings in prostitution. He's happy when t......more

Goodreads review by Kressel on June 22, 2017

If you’ve read Freakonomics, then you’ve already been introduced to this amazing story. As a grad student in sociology, Sudhir Venkatesh naively walked into a Chicago public housing project with the aim of researching urban poverty. Armed with a survey, he proceeded to interview the first people he......more

Goodreads review by Caroline on September 29, 2009

I had mixed feelings about Venkatesh's book. It exposed and detailed a world that I knew nothing about, and peaked my curiosity to look into the subject matter of gangs and life in the projects in greater detail. Venkatesh did an excellent job of explaining the inner workings of life in the projects......more

Goodreads review by Anna on March 27, 2008

Gang Leader for a Day is hands down one of the best books I have ever read. Sudhir Venkatesh, whose research on gangs was first made famous in Freakonomics, wrote this memoir of how he came to become an active observer of the drug trade in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes (infamous public housing proje......more

Goodreads review by Maciej on May 07, 2019

Sudhir Venkatesh tells you a true story of him going into the ghetto where he tries to fill a survey in Chicago gangs given to him by his University. When he went into Chicago’s ghetto buildings and tried to interview some gang members about their interactions and day-to-day dealings within the crac......more

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