
A sociology professor infiltrates Chicago's gang underworld, becoming the unlikely confidant of drug dealers in America's most notorious housing project. Featured in "Freakonomics" and sparking fierce ethical debates, Venkatesh's controversial immersion reveals the hidden economic systems powering urban poverty.
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Picture a young graduate student walking into one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects with a clipboard and survey questions about poverty. Within hours, he's being held hostage by a crack-dealing gang in a dark stairwell. Most people would run and never look back. Sudhir Venkatesh did the opposite-he kept coming back for a decade. What began as academic curiosity transformed into something far more complicated: a front-row seat to an entire underground world that most Americans pretend doesn't exist. The Robert Taylor Homes housed 30,000 people in a sprawling maze of high-rises where official unemployment hit 96%, yet everyone seemed to be working. Where police were often more dangerous than criminals. Where a gang leader managed his crack operation with the strategic precision of a Fortune 500 CEO. This wasn't the poverty you see in statistics or news reports. This was poverty as a living, breathing ecosystem-brutal, complex, and surprisingly organized.