I don’t know why Sudhir Venkatesh is still alive. After hanging out with some of Chicago’s most violent gangs as a sociology graduate student for over three years, Gang Leader for a Day tells how gangs work, why most public policy aimed at poverty is useless, and what we might do as a society to make things better for the poor. Venkatesh takes insane risks, but lives to tell the tale of the Dark Side of life in America.