Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh’s Off the Books is what you would get if you sent Michael Porter into the ghetto with a notebook. Venkatesh makes a fascinating analysis of the competitive forces at play in the “underground economy,” in which the players make difficult tradeoffs as they struggle to survive in a decaying inner city. This book is compelling as an ethnography but also as a primer for anyone trying to understand the economics of the ‘hood, which are not as simplistic as the stereotype of ghetto grocers and criminal activity. Instead, it is a vast web of relationships that span the boundaries of what is legal and what is not and the decisions that players have to make in their neighborhoods when their community is physically and economically isolated from the larger society, lacks support from government policy and is deprived of even a basic police presence.Great reading for understanding the economy, political and otherwise of cities with predominately black inner cores like Chicago or New Orleans. I highly recommend it to my colleagues doing community work in the Crescent City: after this, you will never think about St. Claude the same way.

Buy this book at your local bookstore.