Book Review: Sudhir Venkatesh’s “Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York’s Underground Economy”

Sudhir Venkatesh is a sociologist who has spent years studying the underworld, fist in Chicago and, more recently, in New York City. His 2013 book Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York’s Underground Economy is, in a sense, both a result of his years in the latter city and, perhaps seemingly paradoxically, about their lack of results.

In the book, Venkatesh traces his attempts to come into contact with people who work in the city’s underground economy – the sex and drug...