Floating City by Sudhir Venkatesh

Floating City by Sudhir Venkatesh

After his insider's study of Chicago crack gangs electrified the academy, Columbia University sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh spent a decade immersed in New York's underbelly, observing the call girls, drug dealers, prostitutes and other strivers that make up this booming underground economy. Amidst the trust-funder cocktail parties, midtown strip clubs, and immigrant-run sex shops, he discovers a surprisingly fluid and dynamic social world - one that can be found in global cities everywhere - as traditional boundaries between class, race and neighbourhood dissolve. In Floating City, Venkatesh explores New York from high to low, tracing the invisible threads that bind a handful of ambitious urban hustlers, from a Harvard-educated socialite running a high-end escort service to a Harlem crack dealer adapting to changing demands by selling cocaine to hedge fund managers and downtown artists. In the process, and as he questions his own reasons for going deeper into this subterranean world, Venkatesh finds something truly unexpected - community. Floating City is Venkatesh's journey through the 'vast invisible continent' of New York's underground economy - a thriving yet largely unseen world that exists in parallel to our own, at the heart of every city.

Sudhir Venkatesh is the William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology, and the Committee on Global Thought, at Columbia University. His last book Gang Leader for a Day, based on the decade he spent with the Black Kings gang in Chicago, was an international bestseller and received a Best Book award from The Economist. He lives in New York City.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780241002759
ISBN 10	0241002753
Title	Floating City
Author	Sudhir Venkatesh
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	2013-09-12
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable