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.