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Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? Which should be feared more: snakes or french fries? Why do sumo wrestlers cheat? In this groundbreaking book, leading economist Steven Levitt—Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and winner of the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark medal for the economist under 40 who has made the greatest contribution to the discipline—reveals that the answers. Joined by acclaimed author and podcast host Stephen J. Dubner, Levitt presents a brilliant—and brilliantly entertaining—account of how incentives of the most hidden sort drive behavior in ways that turn conventional wisdom on its head.
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What do estate agents and the Ku Klux Klan have in common? Why do drug dealers live with their mothers? How can your name affect how well you do in life? The answer: Freakonomics. It's at the heart of everything we do and the things that affect us daily, from sex to crime, parenting to politics, fat to cheating, fear to traffic jams. And it's all about using information about the world around us to get to the heart of what's really happening under the surface of everyday life. Now updated with the authors' New York Times columns and blog entries, this cult bestseller will show you how, by unravelling your life's secret codes, you can discover a totally new way of seeing the world.
I loved it! As someone who loves data and loves learning about everything under the sun, Freakanomics is exactly my kind of book. Reminiscent of Adam Ruins Everything, it takes a variety of topics and breaks them down into bite sized bits of data and information, explaining how they collected it and what the data says. The bonus material at the end made me extraordinarily happy as well. I would recommend this book for anyone who listens to Adam Conover, readers of Cory Doctorow, and readers of Charles Soule.