On the Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife

David Grazian's riveting tour of downtown Philadelphia and its newly bustling nightlife scene reveals the city as an urban playground where everyone dabbles in games of chance and perpetrates elaborate cons. Entertainment in the city has evolved into a professional industry replete with set designers, stage directors, and method actors whose dazzling illusions tempt even the shrewdest of customers. As entertaining and illuminating as the confessional stories it recounts, On the Make is a fascinating expos of the smoke and mirrors employed in the city at night.

David Grazian is associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs, also published by the University of Chicago Press.