Stephen J Dubner, author of the best-seller Freakonomics and sometime collaborator, says that Venkatesh was born with 'an overdeveloped curiosity and an underdeveloped fear.'

Ventakesh is now a 41-year-old sociology professor at New York's Columbia University.

He has set down his unique experiences in a new book, entitled Gang Leader for a Day.

Venkatesh's mentor was 'JT', leader of the Black Kings gang.

Although JT had a college degree, he abandoned corporate America to run a crack dealing operation that netted him up to US$100,000 (£51,000) every year.

JT considered himself to be a political leader and Venkatesh his biographer.

Residents grew to accept Venkatesh because he asked few questions -- and as a South Indian American, he was neither black nor white.

As time went on, JT challenged Venkatesh academically, forcing him to think more deeply about urban poverty in the US.

The friendship grew so deep that after a few years, JT handed Venkatesh the reins to his gang for a day -- a job Venkatesh discovered wasn't as easy as it seemed.

Venkatesh heard gang leaders talk of the importance of community while simultaneously destroying it with crack -- a dichotomy he found hard to reconcile.

He also struggled to understand why besieged residents put up little resistance.

"Everyone is caught up in a world of desperation," said Venkatesh.

"Making moral decisions the way middle class people would is almost impossible."

But it was the violence that Venkatesh found hardest of all to deal with.

"A man would beat up a woman and then residents would beat that man up," he said.

"That sound of bone on bone then a moan like a sick cow being beaten -- you never forget that."

Ventakesh hopes his book will help the public 'understand the combination of desperation and creativity and ingenuity that exists in some of the poor neighborhoods.'

"I don't want poverty to fall off the map,'' he said.