Gang Leader for a Day

Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh recounts how, as a first-year graduate student at the University of Chicago, he carried a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty into the Robert Taylor Homes housing project and met JT, a leader in the Black Kings gang. JT urged him to try more qualitative methods and invited him to watch. Over most of a decade under JT's protection, Venkatesh observed the gang's crack-selling business and its corporation-like structure, and came to know squatters, police, activists and officials. Written in the first person with some techniques of fiction, the memoir expands a story first told in Freakonomics. AMC Networks was reported in 2017 to be developing a drama series from it.

Mark Zuckerberg chose it for his book club, saying it explores life for people who do not live under effective governance, a theme loosely tied to The Better Angels of Our Nature. Readable founder Gabriel Coarna said it substantially changed how he thinks about poverty, economics and society.