Gang Leader for a Day
Sudhir Venkatesh was a graduate student in sociology at the University of Chicago when he began spending time in the Robert Taylor Homes, a public housing project, to study urban poverty. This 2008 book recounts the years he spent with a crack-dealing gang there, after a chance encounter led its leader to let him observe up close. Venkatesh describes the gang as a structured organization with its own economy, leadership, and rules, and he documents how residents, tenant leaders, and the gang depended on and clashed with one another. The book grew out of research that also informed the bestseller Freakonomics, which featured his findings on gang finances. Written as a candid memoir of fieldwork, it raises hard questions about the ethics of his methods and what an outsider can really understand. It offers a rare ground-level view of life in one community.
What you might want to know about Gang Leader for a Day
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A sociologist embeds with a Chicago gang in the projects and reports what he learns about its economy and daily life.
Yes. It is a memoir of the fieldwork Venkatesh did as a sociology student, spending years with a gang in a Chicago housing project to study urban poverty.
Yes. Venkatesh's research on the gang's economy was featured in Freakonomics, and this book tells the fuller story behind that work.
Gang Leader for a Day was written by Sudhir Venkatesh, published in 2008 by Penguin Group UK.
Gang Leader for a Day is 311 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Gang Leader for a Day takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Gang Leader for a Day is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.