Reading Order
Gang Leader for a Day Reading Order
Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets (2008) is a memoir-cum-sociology of Venkatesh's years studying the Black Kings gang in the Robert Taylor Homes housing project in Chicago, where he developed an unlikely friendship with gang leader J.T. and gained unprecedented access to the internal workings of a street gang's economic and social organization.
Where to start
Gang Leader for a Day
Complete Gang Leader for a Day Book List
- 1Buy
Gang Leader for a Day
Sudhir Venkatesh·2008·The complete standalone book. No sequels; start and finish here. - 2Buy
American Project
Sudhir Venkatesh·2000·Venkatesh's academic book about the Robert Taylor Homes, drawing on the same fieldwork as Gang Leader for a Day but written in an academic register for scholars. Read after for the full sociological argument.
Gang Leader for a Day — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Gang Leader for a Day a true story?
Yes — Gang Leader for a Day is Venkatesh's memoir of his actual fieldwork in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago during the 1990s, when he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago studying under sociologist William Julius Wilson. J.T. is a real person whose identity Venkatesh has protected with a pseudonym. Venkatesh's methods were controversial among sociologists — particularly his access to gang records and his witnessing of illegal activity without reporting it — and he has discussed those ethical questions in subsequent interviews and writings.
What is the Robert Taylor Homes?
The Robert Taylor Homes was a public housing project on the South Side of Chicago, built between 1960 and 1962 as one of the largest public housing developments in American history — 28 high-rise buildings housing more than 27,000 people at peak capacity. By the time Venkatesh arrived in the early 1990s, the complex was severely deteriorated and largely controlled by gangs. The Chicago Housing Authority demolished the last buildings between 2005 and 2007 as part of its Plan for Transformation.
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