Floating City - Hustlers, Strivers, Dealers, Call Girls and Other Lives in Illicit New York

After his insider''s study of Chicago crack gangs electrified the academy, Columbia University sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh spent a decade immersed in New York''s underbelly, observing the call girls, drug dealers, prostitutes and other strivers that make up this booming underground economy. Amidst the trust-funder cocktail parties, midtown strip clubs, and immigrant-run sex shops, he discovers a surprisingly fluid and dynamic social world - one that can be found in global cities everywhere. Floating City is Venkatesh''s journey through the ''vast invisible continent'' of New York''s underground economy - a thriving yet largely unseen world that exists in parallel to our own.