Sharkey is the author of Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, The Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence, published in 2018 by W.W. Norton. The book focuses on how the decline of violent crime has affected urban life and urban inequality in America. His first book, Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality, was published in 2013 by the University of Chicago Press.
