In such a setting, Anderson maintains, violence serves a useful purpose. It’s a way of demanding the respect that mainstream society withholds. It’s the response of isolated, angry people fending for themselves. “Where you’ve got large numbers of alienated people, and the police are dealing with them in disrespectful ways, street justice is the norm,” he observes. In other words, the police are largely to blame, along with a society that provides few jobs and little hope.

All true. But if Anderson stopped there, his book would be a monumental waste of time, another liberal rant against the system. It is important precisely because he doesn’t stop there. Instead, he demonstrates, time and again, how optimism, ambition and decency can sprout in the most unlikely places, given even the slimmest chance. All the same, to revisit the streets where he worked is to realize why those attributes are so difficult to sustain, even for those trying hardest to keep them alive.

Rob (who asked that his full name not be used) is such a person. A resident of Mutua, a neighborhood in West Philadelphia, Rob, now 28, learned about drugs before he hit puberty. By the time he was 14, he was a drug dealer. At 17 he was a felon, convicted of aggravated assault against a rival. Three years ago he got out of prison, vowing never to return.

His old buddies assumed he meant to re-enter the life. One even offered him a gun. Rob refused it. Instead, with the help of a neighborhood activist, Rob struck out in another direction. He retook his old turf from the dealers who had replaced him and opened a fruit stand and, later, a hot-dog concession. Bright, amicable and assured, Rob so impressed Anderson that the sociologist hired him as a part-time assistant. He equally impressed a stranger who saw him cleaning up in the neighborhood and subsequently gave him a job working on computers and learning programming. Rob is also taking on the role of community leader and organizing neighborhood events. “At one time I was a destructive leader. Now I’m a constructive leader,” he says.

The transition has not been painless. When he sold hot dogs, people were always looking for the drugs under his potato chips, Rob recalls. And his old friends taunted him for giving up money and respect for a marginal shot at mainstream success.

Herman Wrice, the activist Rob initially approached for help, prays that Rob prevails. “This neighborhood has got to believe one of them made it,” says Wrice. We are standing on the intersection of 34th and Haverford, the corner where Rob once sold drugs. Wrice is watching over several youngsters learning to work an electric lawn mower. “The dreams are in the new people,” says Wrice. Rob is an important example to that generation coming up. But “our chance of finding Robs is very rare,” acknowledges Wrice. That is underscored by the fact that two buddies with whom Rob made a pact to go straight were unable to keep it. And Rob himself is living on the economic edge.

That he nonetheless has come so far is due not only to his impressive resolve, but to the help of men like Wrice and Anderson. Indeed, to read Anderson’s book or spend time with him is to realize that he is far from a detached observer. He constantly intercedes, finding his sources a lawyer or a job, lending them encouragement and even money. Wrice has been so stirred by the example that he is now convinced the key to saving inner cities lies not in government but in sociology departments. What would happen, he wonders, if sociologists in urban universities across America behaved like Elijah Anderson?

Anderson, scholar that he is, is more comfortable talking about structure and systems, about the myriad forces conspiring against those who live in communities like Mutua. But the most powerful point his book makes has little to do with formal sociological analysis. It has to do with the role he and Wrice play instinctively. They demonstrate how souls are saved (or lost) one by one and how, even for those in the most desperate circumstances, a few caring hearts can make a world of difference.