I've never watched The Wire

so I can't comment about it, but this last post in a series of 9 on "real thugs" watching a show about "real thugs" is overwhelmingly interesting.

Someday Sudhir Venkatesh will win a Nobel, I think, though maybe this is a long shot as his field doesn't seem to fit the prize fields.

So maybe he won't, but I do think that he has both an unusual eye for the story and an unusual perspective (these may be the same) on what it means to be white or black in America today. I'm currently enjoying his Off the Books, though at times it reads a bit like thesis research.