Elijah Anderson is an American ethnographer and sociologist and is considered one of the leading minds in his field of expertise, urban ethnography. Anderson directs the Urban Ethnography Project at Yale University, where he also holds the Sterling Professorship in Sociology and African American Studies. Anderson is the author of six books, which most notably include Code of the Street (1999), Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male (2009), and The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life (2011). In addition to his academic work and career as a writer, Anderson has also served as a consultant to many important agencies, including the White House and the United States Congress.

Throughout the book, Anderson approaches his subject matter with both objectivity and empathy as he expresses his observations on the root causes of urban poverty and the subsequent alienation this causes. In addition, giving his interview subjects the ability to tell their own stories, in their own words, without him editorializing or reframing, is a sign of respect for the lives they lead. Only in the last chapter, where he explains his own relationship with John Turner, does he break the fourth wall with the reader in a significant way, moving from his position as a sociologist to an active participant.