Quote:
Originally Posted by Blarobbarg
Sudhir Venkatesh is a professor of sociology at Columbia University and a lead writer of urban life and underground economies. Once upon a time, he was a lowly grad student looking for something more meaningful than just writing numbers. He ended up making his way to one of the poorest areas of Chicago, and long story short, became best friends with a high level leader in the Black Kings, a large gang. This book basically documents his life with his new friend and talks in detail about gang life, relationships with non-gang members in gang territory, life in large urban housing apartment complexes, etc etc etc. Basically, it's awesome. Check it out if you're interested at all in any of those topics.
PS- I picked it up for $1! Gotta love used book stores. |
Fuc
king brilliant book, especially if you like shows like
The Wire for their socio-economic commentary. His other book
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor is another one that's well worth reading if you enjoyed
Gang Leader for a Day. I really liked how it flowed like I expected a story might, yet still retained its biographical origins, which actually segues quite nicely into what I'm reading.
Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
Basically it's a biographical book with the structure of a fictional story. According to the opening forward, the book is a really good counter-point to the more popular
Shogun novel by Australian author James Clavell, who was willing to distort history in order to give the story more appeal. Apparently all Yoshikawa really did was change a few names out of respect for the real people they were based on, and then added in the dialogue. In either case, I've heard
Shogun is fantastic and look forward to reading it at some point, but for right now I can't wait to delve into the history of one of Japan's greatest Samurai's.