In 1989 Судхира Венкатеша - young, fearless and a bit naive sociologist - sent to conduct соцопрос in the poorest black ghettos of Chicago. Armed with the pile of questions as though "Which to be you black and poor"?, he sets forth for semineglected многоэтажку, where he is immediately seized and begin to interrogate local gangsters deciding, that the that Mexican spy. Under a morning he is rescued by Джей Ти - young and charisma a ringleader of band is "Black kings". "So you know nothing, - he will say. - Why not to associate you with people"?Under the invented name "Black kings" the band of Гэнгста Дисайплз, controlling in 90 the turn of крэк-кокаина through this country, hides, probably. The nearest ten years of Судхир will conduct in Роберт-Тейлор-Хоумс, one of worst ghettos Chicago being fully under control two bands, and will talk to the people - by gangsters and policemen, prostitutes and souteneurs, house-managers and lodgers, сквоттерами and lodgers. Him will invite on gangster evening-parties, basket-ball matches, funerals and to itself on a kitchen. He will become the witness of shootouts, beatings, general corruption, lawlessness and surprizing ability of people to survive in any terms. He even will get access to the accounting reports of gangsters and possibility one day поруководить a band.His research fully will invert a look to municipal poverty and will earn to him the place of teacher in Harvard, where Венкатеш will make friends with an economist by Stephen Левиттом, with that they long time will devote to the study of economy of bands. Article "Why gangsters live with mothers" will enter a book "Фрикономика". Венкатеш independently will go back to this theme in the book "American проджект", and then, many years after, will produce this book.