The author Sudhir Venkatesh is currently a professor of sociology at Columbia University. In 1989 when Sudhir undertook this brazen life-threatening, information gathering expedition deep inside of one of the worst ghetto's in America he was a mere first year grad student at the University Of Chicago. As he entered this epicenter of drugs, killings, crimes and powerful gangs, he was armed more with naiveté than with chutzpah or cojones. Sudhir had started attending seminars where the professors posed the classic sociological questions: "How do an individual's preferences develop? Can we predict human behavior? What are the long-term consequences, for instance, of education on future generations. The standard mode of answering these questions was to conduct widespread surveys and then use complex mathematical methods to analyze the survey data. This would produce statistical snapshots meant to predict why a given person might, say, fail to land a job, or end up in prison, or have a child out of wedlock. It was thought that the key to formulating good policy was to first formulate a good scientific study." He liked the questions, but compared to the living-breathing people he saw on the streets of Chicago, "the discussion in these seminars seemed cold and distantly, abstract and lifeless. He found it particularly curious that most of these researchers didn't seem interested in meeting the people they wrote about."
Sudhir decided, perhaps naively, that he would simply "walk" to where the people that were being studied resided and ask them questions. He first struck up friendships with some older men at Washington Park which resided just across Cottage Grove Avenue from the University Of Chicago. One gentleman named Leonard Combs, aka "Old Time" told him, "Never trust a white man, and don't think black folk are any better." Another acquaintance Charlie Butler said, "You got two kinds of whites in this city, and two kinds of blacks. You got whites who'll beat you if you come into their neighborhood. Then you got another group that won't invite you in. They'll call the police if you come in their neighborhood - and the police will beat you up." As far as blacks; "You got blacks who are beating their heads trying to figure out a way to live where you live! Don't ask me why. And then you got a whole lot of black folk who realize it ain't no use. Sudhir started interviewing the men and Charlie could see how dismayed and dejected Sudhir was. "Before you give up," he said, "you should probably speak to the people who you really want to talk to - young men, not us. That's the only way you're going to get what you need." And that advice is what led to this "UN-FLINCHABLE", "UN-RELENTING", "UN-FORGIVING", "UNFORGETTABLE" book!

Sudhir went to the University Of Chicago library and checked the census records to find a tract with poor black families with people between the ages of 16 and 24. This led him to the Lake Park projects Building Number 4040. Sudhir just a few months removed from a long stretch of time following the Grateful Dead wearing a tie-dyed shirt and donning a ponytail, innocently strolled into a dark, damp, abandoned building smelling of urine and hopelessness, carrying a clipboard with sociology questions. Before he could even get used to the nauseating odor of urine and vomit he was surrounded by members of the "Black Kings" gang. They at first thought he was part of a rival Mexican gang and before you could blink your eyes one gang member had a gun at his head and another gang member was wielding a six inch knife. Sudhir kept telling them he was a student trying to take a survey. When the leader of the local housing project J.T. got involved he said , "Well ask me a question." So in the midst of guns, knives, and urine, Sudhir asked his first question."HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE BLACK AND POOR?"

From that point forward J.T. takes a liking to Sudhir for a number of reasons, one of which is he mist

Thus Reggie, a Chicago gang member, warned the author of this book. Thank goodness, Venkatesh wasn't frightened away, and the consequence is this narrative about a Chicago crack-dealing gang.

I first learned something about life in a Chicago housing project when I read David Isay's heartbreaking Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago (1999), and something about the street drug trade in David Simons and Edward Burns' grueling The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1998). Both have become classics. Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day is, I believe, destined to join them as an on-the-spot narrative of gang culture of Chicago. Some of the people whose lives he tracks--J.T., Clarisse, Mama and Pops Patton, Reggie, Millie, T-Bone--grow on you until you feel as if you actually know them.

While a graduate student at the University of Chicago, weary of cold statistical analysis, Venkatesh began hanging out with the Black Kings, a crack-selling gang who headquartered in the Robert Taylor Homes projects. He wanted to get in touch with the gang subculture through direct observation. He entered into the project pretty naive and just a bit too full of himself. Seven years later, after following the Black Kings and establishing a relationship with their leader, one J.T., the things he'd seen and heard made him a lot more streetwise and a little less cocky.

During his seven-year study, "Mr. Professor," as J.T.'s mother initially called Venkatesh, learned that Chicago gangs, or at least J.T.'s outfit, lived in a culture of violence and machismo, but also functioned in an unexpected way as police in their own territory. From the perspective of society, they were lawbreakers. But at Robert Taylor Homes, they were also lawmakers, keeping a tight rein on adventitious violence and, through acts of "philanthropy," keeping the local economy fueled with drug money.

He discovered about halfway through his research with the Black Kings that he'd witnessed or heard about so many gang and drug deal activities that he'd do well to seek legal advice. When he did, he discovered (to his discomfort) that there was no such thing under the law as "researcher-client confidentiality," and that he was in a vulnerable legal position. At one point during his project, he actually worried that "he was falling into a hole [of criminality] I could never dig myself out of" (p. 250)

He realized that getting wounded in gang violence nine times out of ten meant either that nobody would call an ambulance for you, or if they did, that no ambulance would make a run into the inner city war zone to pick you up.

He learned that there's a city-wide organization and hierarchy when it comes to many Chicago gangs, including the Black Kings.

And from spending all this time with pushers, junkies, gangsters, civilians, hookers, and cops, and learning firsthand about their lives, he learned that it's risky to make holier-than-thou comparisons. When he bade J.T. farewell, for example, Venkatesh mentioned to the gangleader that he wasn't sure he was ready to jump into another longterm research project. J.T. cannily observed that there was little else Venkatesh was qualified to do. "You can't fix nothing, you never worked a day in your life. The only think you know how to do is hang out with n-----s like us" (p. 281).

An excellent, fascinating book, sometimes frightening, at other times unspeakably sad, and at still others funny: but always with the feel of authenticity and never sentimental. Highly recommended, as is his American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (2002) and especially his recent (2006) Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. In fact, the latter book could easily be read as a companion volume to Gang Leader for a Day.