The Tomorrow Game, Sudhir Venkatesh
The Tomorrow Game, Sudhir Venkatesh
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Tomorrow Game
Rival Teenagers, Their Race for a Gun, and a Community United to Save Them

Author: Sudhir Venkatesh

Narrator: Soneela Nankani

Unabridged: 7 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/28/2022


Synopsis

A New York Times bestselling author’s gripping account of a Chicago community coming together to save a group of teenagers from gun violence.

In the tradition of works like Random Family and Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Sudhir Venkatesh’s The Tomorrow Game is a deeply reported chronicle of families surviving in a Southside Chicago community.

At the heart of the story are two teenagers: Marshall Mariot, an introverted video gamer and bike rider, and Frankie Paul, who leaves foster care to direct his cousin’s drug business while he’s in prison. Frankie devises a plan to attack Marshall and his friends—it is his best chance to showcase his toughness and win respect for his crew. Catching wind of the plan, Marshall and his friends decide they must preemptively go after Frankie’s crew to defend their honor. The pressure mounts as both groups of teens race to find a gun and strike first. All the while, the community at large—a cast that includes the teens’ families, black market gun dealers, local pastors, a bodega owner, and a veteran beat cop—try their best to defuse the conflict and keep the kids alive.

Based on Venkatesh’s three decades of immersion in Chicago’s Southside, and as propulsive as a novel, The Tomorrow Game is a nuanced, timely look at the toll that poverty and gun violence take on families and their communities.

About Sudhir Venkatesh

Sudhir Venkatesh is the author of Floating City and Gang Leader for a Day, a New York Times bestseller that received a best book of the year award from The Economist. He has been a Columbia University Professor, a Director of Safety teams at Facebook and Twitter, and a Senior Advisor to the Department of Justice. Venkatesh’s writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joe on October 02, 2022

A nauseatingly true story that reads like watching a movie - a really fucking good movie. Based on the sociological research of the scholar turned author, this riveting piece of narrative non-fiction comes at the perfect time, as ground-level movements of violence interruption and restorative justic......more

Goodreads review by Hilmg on October 10, 2022

The publishers call this book a deeply reported chronicle, and it is in a few ways. I trust the author’s diligence to events & am not questioning his care for the community he studies. I have not read his other works, but as a stand alone book, this one leaves me so unsettled. All of the characters......more

Goodreads review by Tori on December 28, 2022

This book was obviously written by an non-native of Chicago, let along Chicago’s south side. Unless you want pre-existing biases to be confirmed, I would recommend reading any other book by authors from the South Side before this one. Professor Sudhir Venkatesh writes a story that feels factual in m......more

Goodreads review by Laura on December 28, 2022

Another great one from SV. Not only does my connection to Chicago and to the affected populations deepen the sentiment of his writing for me, but I love SVs approach to ethnography and applied sociology. He represents a path I wish I had taken.......more

Goodreads review by Frank on January 02, 2023

Written like engaging fiction, an interesting new style for Venkatesh, but couldn't put it down. The story of a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago trying to keep two kids from shooting each other.......more