Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Crosses the Line
By Sudhir Venkatesh
Allen Lane £18.99, 320 pages
FT bookshop price: £15.19

If you’ve read Freakonomics, you already know of Sudhir Venkatesh. One chapter of the bestseller was based on Venkatesh’s decade of research into life in a south Chicago housing project, in which he gained unprecedented access to the financial records of a gang dealing crack cocaine.