It reads like a textbook, devoid of any of the light-hearted tones of Freakanomics, this book covers in excruciating detail every social, political, religious and econominc facet of what causes and sustains an underground economy. Unfortunately very little space is given to covering the day to day transactions of this community, of who does what, how they do it and how much they make. Overall it is an impressive, comprehensive and at times, touching study of what drives this community to live as it does, but unfortunately for me it was too dry. Infomative and interesting, but a difficult read and not entertaining.

Here in its fullest glory, we get to see both the geography and the calculus of living in the American ghetto: the everyday tradeoffs being made hourly to survive, between "whoring and pimping" or "flipping burgers and cleaning toilets:" hustling pure and simple, from hawking ghettoware to fixing cars, to selling crack cocaine. No matter how it is parsed; no matter how elegant and academically it is dressed up, no matter how detailed it is analyzed, the American ghetto, whether Marquis Park, Robert Taylor, Altgeld Gardens, or Pruitt Igo, is the part of the American environment created so that only chaos can reign: and it is not merely la vie quotidienne Americaine (or slice of American life). It is survival of the "least prepared" in the very lap of 21st Century affluence.

One of the problems with classical sociological analysis is that the Heisenberg effect (of the researcher getting in the way of, or inadvertently becoming a part of, his own analysis) begins to creep into play so early on, and so subtly, that the researcher can remain totally unaware of its creeping effects. Before he knows it, the "human" subjects he is studying will have become but "so many bugs at the end of a microscope in a Petrie dish," and then, very much after the fact, all of the collating and sorting just become routine -- not only seeming normal, but also appropriate. Psychological distance from the subject is then seen not only necessary, but the sine qua non of clinical objectivity.

While this "psychological distancing" of the researcher is somewhat subtler than that which occurs in the "normal societal distancing process," it is "distancing" nonetheless. It kind of goes without saying that America's race sensitive culture is keen on "social distancing" and on invoking black and white dichotomies wherever it can be done. Arguably, being able to do so is the real scalpel used to carve out the basic reality of American culture.

However, these dichotomies in the human sciences, these artificial partitions, this "distancing," this compartmentalization, and splitting-off, of which there seems to be little else and no end to, in American culture, are artifacts of reality; they are not "reality per se" no matter how often (or subtly) they are invoked, or how much they are relied upon. Eventually the human equation must come back to earth and be resolved. Most of all, we expect Sociologist to know this, and thus we expect them to look out for this phenomenon. The point is simply this: because of artificial "distancing," unless the researcher decides to "come up for air often," frequently reviewing, and constantly re-centering and realigning his analysis vis a vis his own psychological involvement and societal perspective, always doing so in its larger context, he can never be sure that what he is studying is grounded in the same humanity of which he is a part.

It seems that Professor Venkatesh, whose work I admire very much (After reading and reviewing his first book I have already purchased the other two), forgot to come up for air, and as a result also forgot that Marquis Park is also still very much "America proper" (not America improper). Marquis Park is not a foreign country, or a specimen in a Petrie dish; or even a parallel social universe as the author alludes to repeatedly: but flesh and blood America, bound to the larger polity not only through neglect, guilt and shame, but also by a common substrate and thread of history, ideas and culture. Ghetto people think like Americans, even though they act, and are treated, otherwise.

Marquis Park is to America, what the "crazy cousin" that Blacks used to hide in the back room was to the black family. Everyone knew the cousin was back there even though he was always kept out of sight; it just was very much "un-politic" to acknowledge his existence. But even under those circumstances, unlike the Marquis Parks of the American family, the cousin was well fed and clothed, and taken out to the park periodically to get fresh air. That is to say, even he was provided the minimum subsistence that was provided every other family member, even though it was improper to acknowledge his existence.

And just like the "Marquis Parks of America" are, the crazy cousin's existence too was "assumed to be a part of another parallel universe." It was a case of families remaining in denial about their own members. And one supposes that if a sociologist were to study the "crazy cousin phenomenon" in the Black family in the same way that the Black ghetto is studied, America, the family in question would share no responsibility for the crazy cousin's well being. The two would simply continue to exist in two separate parallel universes; a virtual sociological and psychological dichotomy, crazy cousin in the back room, and well-adjusted, guilty but still very much dignified family, on the other side of the partition, in the front room.

The very act of severing a malignant limb from the societal body is itself a profoundly cultural act, but also a clever sociological trick: a form of collective denial wrapped in academic clothing, a denial of the reality of the existential connection between the limb and the larger body proper: In this case American society. There is in fact no separate reality that corresponds to this severing of the limb from the body. It is a psychological and cultural trick, an illusion. It is the "act of partitioning" itself that brings this false reality into being: without it, there is only one America, from sea-to-shining-sea, with Marquis Park in the front, not in the back room. Without this artificial psychological partition, there is no separate Marquis Park; there is only one room: the American family. To speak of it otherwise, as if there are indeed two parallel universes, actually defines and punctuates those two non-existent universes and brings their respective realities into being.

The point is that the compartmentalization, the dissociation, the fractionation, the splitting-off, the dissembling, wherever and however it occurs is artificial. It is collective denial, a mere rationalization for avoiding a larger problem in the larger psychological and sociological frame: American culture, writ large. In a real sense, the Marquis Parks, Altgeld, Robert Taylors, and Pruitt Igos are just the crazy cousins that America keeps hidden in its ghettoes out of sight in the back rooms. In my humble view, that is what has happened here too with this analysis. The very act of studying Marquis Park as if it is a specimen in a bottle is itself a profound act of psychological compartmentalization, and thus makes the analysis itself very much a part of the same dehumanization process that America makes the black ghetto: a process that in all its essential elements, denies that Marquis Park is a proper part of the larger American cultural family.

What we expect sociology to do is just the opposite: to "Tear down that artificial wall between the front and the back rooms." But instead what we have here is in effect, an examination of the crazy cousin's ear wax (modalities of ghetto survival) on the laboratory table, and a very much learned analysis of the importance of studying the ear wax of crazy cousins - all the better to keep attention away from the culpability of those in the front room. But being in the maze running around the track with the rat is not exactly the same thing as objective sociological analysis. It is always a matter of interactive psychological perspectives, not just a matter of location in space and time.

Being a student of William Julius Wilson could not have helped in avoiding the narrowness of Dr. Vankatesh's focus. However, I was happy to see that in addition to the obligatory mention of Wilson's own "The truly Disadvantaged," Professor Venkatesh also cited Elijah Anderson's groundbreaking work, "Codes of the Street," which in my view avoids the Heisenberg effect about as much as it can be avoided in sociological work.

In Anderson's work, which is a healthy mixture of social critiques, psychological and sociological insights, and occasional "hit-or-miss" analyses, the author never escapes completely into an entirely "clinical sociological orbit," but remains attached by a humanitarian umbilical cord to the soul of his subjects. This means in effect that along with seeing them as laboratory rats, he also dips into the psychological analysis of their circumstances, examining how indeed the rat is attached to the larger American environment (which just happens to include himself), that is, how it is connected to the front room. He also comes up for air frequently, always keeping his analysis in front of him: situated in and tightly moored to its larger frame. As interesting as "whoring and selling crack" and other forms of hustling are, they still are quintessentially American, not just ghetto, problems.

Although I have now used up by review space to make this one larger point, I cannot hesitate to say, if only in passing, that Professor Venkatest's work remains at the cutting edge, if not the best example of contemporary sociology dealing with real American problems. His books get my vote for the sociological award of the year for innovative research. He is the "designated trail blazer" in a field that desperately needs them. Despite my heavy-handed criticism, my hat goes off to Professor Venkatesh and his creative and very effective work. Fifty stars.

Sorry...but you did not quite get the lives of these people right. The author simply glazed the surface of the reality of some of these people and made it extremely simplistic. But can you blame him when he has no vested interest in this community. Furthermore, he is like any other person coming into a community and trying to get a story right. As a sociologist he should know that he went over the limit trying to explain a neighborhood and racial group that he knows nothing about and will never be able to genuinely identify with. A professor of African-American studies does not make you African-American. Unfortunately any BLACK professor of African-American studies would have offered a more well-rounded story simply because they are BLACK. Basically, this is as if an African American professor went to tell the story of a ghetto in India. If I saw one more story about someone fixing a car, I was going to just crack up. I live on the south side of Chicago (the south side is not all bad as many have been extremely misinformed...Barack Obama, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson and a host of other wonderful normal, hardworking, non-famous black women and men live on the south side as well) and have worked in this fictional "Maquis Park" and it is not this simple or that different from any so-called underground economy or ghetto. His attempt was laughable, but expected.

I'll try not to repeat what the other reviewers have already said and
just express my opinion on the book.

It is sad but all too true that the poor seldom speak for
themselves. And even though they may live a few blocks away, it
requires a prolonged ethnographic study like Venkatesh's to get
the picture of their daily lives and economic relations.

And the picture he paints is indeed fascinating. Sterile academic
words like "gang activity" or "narcotics" that Venkatesh uses contrast
with the stark reality and the daily struggle that the urban
downtrodden have to lead. This is probably the single most important
reason to read this book. The book provides a comprehensive survey to
the twisted economic and social life of the "shady world": there is a
chapter on "soccer moms", on business people on street hustlers, the
preachers and on the street gangs. However, the main feel that I got
for Marquis Park is that of a place of crushing poverty and
despair. The anecdotes and live situations are bizarre yet possess
their own underlying logic: a gang leader as a person to turn to to
mediate conflicts; a garage owner paying his mechanics with used radio
equipment instead of cash; a church leader "placing" his parishioners
into the homes of the affluent, getting a cut of their wages and then
"rotating" them to make sure they do not lose their dependence on him;
the small business owners fostering relationships with each other
through small loans to secure against tough economic circumstance; the
same business owners are afraid to operate outside the ghetto because
the operating environment is so insecure and the relationships inside
the community provide the meager support in case of hard times. It is
breathtaking how the residents of Marquis Park completely gave up on
the safety net of the modern state and, as in primitive societies,
rely on their children to provide care and support in their old age.

The author's sympathy towards his subjects shows often in the book and
make it a far more pleasurable read. However, this comes with a lot
of effort on the reader's part. Venkatesh writing style is circular
and repetitive. The book starts from the death of the gang leader and
ends with it. This would be a nice narrative device if it were not for
mind-numbing continuous retreading over the same thoughts, ideas and
facts. And it is not that Venkatesh repeats himself word-for-word but
he just goes over the same territory and re-references or re-stresses
or reiterates ad nauseam. At some point I started treating the books
as a primary source --- a witness account rather than a synthetic
scholarly work. Another major complaint is the scatterbrain treatment
of the material. With all the repetition, some of the important
economic background and the history of the formation of the ghetto is
tucked in somewhere in the middle of the book. For example, the ghetto
got so poor because most of the blue color jobs that the ghetto
residents used to be able to get were shipped overseas. This fact is
mentioned offhandedly in the introduction of one of the middle
chapters.

Another major annoyance is the lack of numbers and statistics in the
book. How difficult was it to state what the number of people in
Marquis Park was? How many of them actually migrate out of it? It
seems that there is a constant outflow of people. What is their
average income? How does it compare to the other American inner
cities? What are the economic dynamics of it? They have become poorer
in the last twenty years, but by how much? The author claims there is
no adequate policing. How many policemen are there per resident? How
does it compare to other parts of the city? The author claims there is
overcrowding. How many square feet are there per resident? and so on.
At last it would not have hurt this book to provide some sort of an
idea of what is required to better the lot of the residents of Marquis
Park.

I'll try not to repeat what the other reviewers have already said and
just express my opinion about the book.

It is sad but all too true that the poor seldom speak for
themselves. And even though they may live a few blocks away, it
requires requires a prolonged ethnographic study like Venkatesh to get
the picture of their daily lives and economic relations.

And the picture he paints is indeed fascinating. Sterile academic
words like "gang activity" or "narcotics" that Venkatesh uses contrast
with the stark reality and the daily struggle that urban downtrodden
have to lead. This is probably the single most important reason to
read this book. The anecdotes and live situations are bizarre yet
possess their own underlying logic: a gang leader as a person to turn
to to mediate conflicts; a garage owner paying his mechanics with used
radio equipment instead of cash; a church leader "placing" his
parishioners into the homes of the affluent, getting a cut of their
wages and then "rotating" them to make sure they do not lose their
dependence on him; the small business owners fostering relationships
with each other through small loans to secure against tough economic
circumstance. It is breathtaking how the residents of Marquis Park
completely gave up on the safety net of the modern state and, as in
primitive societies, rely on their children to provide care and
support in their old age.

The author's sympathy towards his subjects shows often in the book and
make it a far more pleasurable read. The book provides a comprehensive
survey to the twisted economic and social life of the "shady
world". However, this comes with a lot of effort on the reader's
part. Venkatesh writing style is circular and repetitive. The book
starts from the death of the gang leader and ends with it. This would
be a nice narrative device if it were not for mind-numbing continuous
retreading over the same thoughts, ideas and facts. And it is not that
Venkatesh repeats himself word-for-word but he just goes over the same
territory and re-references or re-stresses or reiterates ad
nauseam. At some point I started treating the books as a primary
source - rather than a synthetic scholarly work. Another major
complaint is the scatterbrain treatment of the material. With all the
repetition, some of the important economic background and the history
of the formation of the ghetto is tucked in somewhere in the middle of
the book. Another major annoyance is the lack of figures in the
book. How difficult was it to state what the number of people in
Marquis Park was? how many of them actually migrate out of it? It
seems that there is a constant outflow of people. What is their
average income? How does it compare to the other American inner
cities? What are the economic dynamics of it? They have become poorer
in the last twenty years, but by how much? The author claims there is
no adequate policing. How many policemen are there per resident? How
does it compare to other parts of the city? The author claims there is
overcrowding. How many square feet are there per resident? and so on.

At last it would not have hurt this book to provide some sort of an
idea of what is required to better the lot of the residents of Marquis
Park.

Off The Books is a fine, readable description of one neighborhood in the south side if Chicago. The concentration is on the economic life of the adults, but of course ends up covering social, political, and legal aspects of the residents. There's enough gritty detail to keep up the reader's voyeuristic interest in "the baddest part of town", and enough highfalutin scholarly language to maintain academic respectability.

The author has consciously used his ethnicity, neither white nor Black, to learn the deals, the arrangements, the profits and losses of participants in the underground economy of his chosen subject area. It's an interesting subject, honorably researched and respectably presented. Minus two stars for dragging things out, and sloppy English. Definitely recommended if this is your field. Might be good for a general reader.

This book is an easy read and very informative. A lot of things you know already if you even grew up close to a city with an urban center, and you can relate this to a lot of cities other than Chicago. The author is a little long winded, but you'll understand why when you read the book.

Mr. Venkatesh obviously immersed himself in the daily life of the urban poor, and certainly has an interesting five page journal article here, unfortunately he also has an addional382 pages of tedious, repetitive anecdotes from his time interviewing the urban poor. After reading a story about someone illegally repairing a car in an alley for the 100th time (probably not an exaggeration) you start to feel like you are not really getting the full scope of the story.

The limited use of any facts or survey data make this book less useful than it could have been if it were not so focused on anecdotes with little contextual data.

Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh has the potencial for a really good book here, but he mucks it up by switching back and forth between being an objective social scientist reporting his findings and a sympathetic visitor to the urban American slum. His digressions into obscure and arcane points of academic theory interrupt the narrative flow and make the book a tedious read at times.

With that minor quibble stated however, Off the Books is a very enlightening survey of the seemingly intractable problems facing the population of America's ghettos. I highly recommend it to the people who promote laissez-faire economic policies as a cure-all for urban social pathologies.

I thought Off the Books was fascinating and well written. I've recommended it to many people.

This book is about the illicit or "shady" economic activity of people living in "Maquis Park", a poor black neighborhood in Chicago's Southside. The activities Venkatesh includes range from otherwise legitimate enterprises such as auto repair or lunch preparation and delivery performed without proper licensing and permits (and often on public property) to barter of services or products to employing workers (often temporary) off the books to clear illegalities such as drug and gun sales, prostitution, protection rackets and loan sharking.

Venkatesh spent years studying and hanging out in Maquis Park, even participating in the shady economy there, and he provides exhaustive anecdotal description of what he observed. The individual stories and observations are fascinating (if perhaps a bit repetitious). Several other reviewers have described the book in some detail.

But several factors lead me to reduce and otherwise five star rating to four. First, there does not seem to be any overarching synthesis, any theory developed from the data, beyond some general observations as to the residents' resilience. [The one exception that struck me was that Venkatesh does emphasize that the economic calculus within the community is very different from that taught in college classes or employed in the corporate world, and effects the choices made in ways that make sense in context, but may seem pathological to outside commentators.] In particular, there is little comparison with the (underground) economies of poor communities of other ethnicity in inner cities, nor among the rural poor, nor even in working class and suburban neighborhoods (think how many roofers, gardeners or other contractors will give a special rate for cash, or employ workers of unclear documentation). This would be a bit less annoying if Venkatesh did not seem to speak as if his experience, his studied community, were universal, "the" poor.

And the writing. Sometimes it seems hard to find a page without some awkwardness, typo, or simple careless writing which should have been edited. My favorite has to be on page 89, "In suburban ... communities ... there are fewer people per capita...." Er, fewer people per person? Then on page 92, among the variety of "in-kind payments" offered for car repair, he includes "a few have an installment plan" (if they're paying *money* on the installment plan it's not in-kind). Page 111, "supplies, such as ... cleaning services". Then in one paragraph, on page 120, Venkatesh writes (a) "A single individual owns 75 percent of the stores" when he means 75 percent of the stores are owned by individuals, not that one person owns a whole mess of stores, (b) refers to "the 'glass ceiling' that has prevented women from entering the halls of corporate America" [that would be a 'glass wall', wouldn't it?] and (c) "although ... there are a few women who own ... stores ... they are few in number." [Well, 'a few' would be 'few in number', wouldn't it?] Call me a grump, but this kind of writing brings me to a squelching halt, repeatedly, while I figure out what he's trying to say, or just mutter a 'tsk tsk'. Surely Harvard U Press could hire an English grad student at a few bucks an hour to read this stuff.

In sum, lots of good stuff in this book, but diminished by some flaws.

In this book, Venkatesh uses his academic position to exploit the working poor's income mechanisms, supposedly to explain how these types of underground economies work and affect the urban economy. Even though it is well written, this piece just serves to help "the system" with finding ways to mess with people's income. He uses his position to squeeze his subjects to find out how inner city people make income (by pretending he is "down" with them... yeah right!) and write about those sources for his book, supposedly under the careful hand of being a sociologist. Maybe he should just work for the IRS, since he is evidently not a friend to the inner city, as well as a poser, looking for academic praise on the backs of others.

In this book, Venkatesh uses his academic position to exploit the working poor's income mechanisms, supposedly to explain how these types of underground economies work and affect the urban economy. Even though it is well written, this piece just serves to help "the system" with finding ways to mess with people's income. He uses his position to squeeze his subjects to find out how inner city people make income (by pretending he is "down" with them... yeah right!) and write about those sources for his book, supposedly under the careful hand of being a sociologist. Maybe he should just work for the IRS, since he is evidently not a friend to the inner city, as well as a poser, looking for academic praise on the backs of others.

40 years ago, Jane Jacobs influenced generations of planners and urban policy makers with her "Death and Life of Great American Cities," a sensitive and sensible portrait of how great cities work as social organisms. Jacobs turned 60 years of urban policy on its head and gave birth to a new way of thinking about cities and how to solve their problems: by celebrating and encouraging their social fabric, rather than dividing it with freeways and public housing projects. Since Jacobs' work, American cities have seen a great resurgance in their central cores. But today they are more divided than ever between rich and poor. While America's central cities are seeing more investment and interest than ever before, those same central cities are also home to deepening poverty and despair.

Sudhir Venkatesh has produced a startlingly honest portrayal of how this "other half" the American urban experience really works. While Jacobs saw density as the answer to the city's problems rather than the cause of them, Venkatesh examines what happens when the density of the city meets deep generational poverty. In a world where everyone is engaged in everyday survival, the "eyes and ears" that Jacobs celebrated as the ultimate contol over social behavior become, in Venkatesh's analysis, the mechnism of regulation of a vast underground, off the books economy. The neighborhoods Venkatesh studies are places that are ignored and forgotten by the larger society, places where resources are scarce and where the very definition of "right and wrong" is colored by the need to survive, to put food on the table, to make rent.

Venkatesh provides a refreshingly non-ideological study into how the urban poor really live. He avoids glamorizing the lives of underground, criminal actors, and avoids moralizing or grandstanding. Rather, he tells us the realities and consequences of the economic decisions of those residing in America's poor central cities. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the state of our cities. It reveals the hidden order beneath the apparent choas of the ghetto. By defining how the ghetto works, Venkatesh may well have started a much-needed conversation on how what we can do to make sure it works differently.

First off, getting the criticism out of the way, the organization and pacing of this book is slightly cantankerous, with instances of logical loopbacks and digressions. It can be slightly frustrating.

What will carry you through is the fact that the subject matter is engrossing. The dynamics of the economic system described are fascinating and synch well with experiences I had living in West Philly, illuminating instances that where puzzling to me. The character studies of his informants are deftly drawn, giving the reader a feel not just for the motivations of the participants in this system, but for who they are as people.

Which, in the end, is the best reason to read this book. It takes one of the most pernicious social stereotypes in American culture, the anti-puritan, the loafing, poor, (insert racial epithet) trash that leeches from the system, and casts it aside. Might some of the behavior of the participants be seen in this light, it can and undoubtedly is. But there is much more going on, as there is always much more going on, than what our deeply seated cultural short-hands allow for. Kudos to Mr. Venkatesh for providing a portrait of a marginalized social group doing what it needs to do to get by and, in their hopes if not their reality, try to get ahead.