Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
ISBN-10
0674044649
ISBN-13
9780674044647
Series
Off the Books
Category
Social Science
Pages
426
Language
English
Published
2009-06-30
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Author
Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

Description

In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate and remarkable ways in which a community survives. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country.

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