"This fascinating study of the Argentine food riots of December 2001 that brought down an elected president makes an important contribution to our understanding of contentious politics and to socio-political life more generally through its illumination of the understudied ‘grey zone’ where clandestine connections blur distinctions between everyday life, routine politics and collective violence. Auyero’s case study is well written and finely drawn, based on numerous interviews backed by a quantitative analysis for all relevant reported events. Especially striking are his findings on how critical action and inaction of political party brokers and the police were to the spread and then the ending of the food riots – but often in surprising ways. Auyero builds from his case material theoretically significant generalizations about the obscure and obscured actions of clientilistic party brokers facilitating widespread looting as police forces stand aside (or even participate themselves). This provocative work encourages us to look for the concealed connections between Routine Politics and Violence in many places beyond Argentina." -Charles Brockett, University of the South.