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|title= Gang Leader For A Day

|author= Sudhir Venkatesh

|date= February 2009

|isbn=978-0141030913

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If you've ever wondered why young people join gangs, and what it's like to bring up a family surrounded by armed drug dealers, you'll find ''Gang Leader For The Day'' fascinating. Sociology student Sudhir Venkatesh wanted to learn by observing the poor, baulking at the abstract, mathematical research methods used by his professors in the University of Chicago. In 1989, armed with a clipboard and a questionnaire, he visited the Robert Taylor Homes, a notorious housing project. Instead of neatly answering his carefully-prepared questions - ''How does it feel to be black and poor?'' by selecting from ''very bad, somewhat bad, neither bad nor good, somewhat good, very good'', he finds himself held hostage overnight by members of the Black Kings, a crack-dealing gang, at the behest of its charismatic local leader, J.T.