Books and
Cooks West
November 2005
Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Freakonomics: A Rogue
Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Michele's place
Sunday, November 13 at 5:30 PM
Apple-bean dish, salad, tomato-artichoke bread, zinfadel,
Gewurztraminer,
chocolate pie, lemon meringue pie
Our rating: 4 cups of tea!
From Amazon.com
Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences.
The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much
publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics.
But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or
that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D.
Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with
Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of
everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated
and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and
drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent
crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the
Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who
would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data
gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a
corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make
great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum
wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents,
Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that
a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These
enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's
2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which
led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such
back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from
what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic
reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe
