Gang Leader for a Day: A rogue sociologist takes to the streets
by Sudhir Venkates
Penguin Press, 2008
American sociology has the tendency to take cover behind government-produced numbers. Here, Sudhir Venkatesh, who knows his numbers, breaks free. His studies on gang life in the US are filled with living human beings and their attempts to come to terms with a harsh and hostile world. In this memoir, he tells us what it was like for this Madras-born, California-raised scholar to hang out with gangsters and drug dealers, as well as ordinary people schooled in the hard knocks of the American underclass. Riveting and powerful, the book leads readers into the sense and sensibility of one of the upcoming Indian-born intellectuals. It's fitting that Venkatesh now is on the team of superstar US presidential candidate Barack Obama. (Vijay Prashad)
Intern: A doctor's initiation
by Sandeep Jauhar
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2008
Sandeep Jauhar joins Abraham Verghese (My Own Country) and Atul Gawande (Complications) as a doctor who is also an accomplished writer. The honest story of a young man's first year in residency, Intern takes readers into the insecurities of creating a life on an upwardly mobile ladder – particularly when there is so much being left behind in the process, particularly in the US health-care system. Jauhar's anxieties push him, and he is now a cardiologist. (VP)