THE TOMORROW GAME by Sudhir Venkatesh (Gang Leader for a Day) is a new work of non-fiction which deals with "Rival Teenagers, Their Race for a Gun, and a Community United to Save Them." Venkatesh is a sociologist and bestselling author (Gang Leader for a Day) who spent more than two decades studying crime and poverty in Chicago. This book, according to his editor, is based on material gathered over two years of embedded reporting and "reads closer to a noir novel." One main character is Frankie Paul, a seventeen year-old high school dropout who has "inherited" running a drug gang from his recently jailed cousin, Willie. Another is Marshall Mariot, a video gamer who is being bullied by Frankie and his inexperienced gang. And a third is Missie, a female gun trafficker. Venkatesh acknowledges that he has relied on myths, or shared forms of storytelling, and purposefully changed the dates and names of people and places when he describes the escalating violence between Frankie and Marshall and community efforts to stop it. While the author's efforts to protect those involved is understandable, it makes the story somewhat disconcerting since it is difficult, but not impossible, to relate to actual locations and individuals. Are our students sophisticated enough readers to parse fact from fiction here? I am not so sure and therefore I am giving THE TOMORROW GAME a neutral rating of 3 stars.