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  • Published: 22 October 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141977393
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $22.99

Floating City

Hustlers, Strivers, Dealers, Call Girls and Other Lives in Illicit New York




From the bestselling author of Gang Leader for a Day, a rare glimpse inside New York's illicit underworld

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. 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.

  • Published: 22 October 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141977393
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Sudhir Venkatesh

Sudhir Venkatesh spent a decade living with the Black Kings gang in Chicago's South Side. His research later became famous in Freakonomics (Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?). He is now Professor of Sociology and African-American studies at Columbia University.

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