Freakonomics

Last week I tried to address one of my academic weaknesses. I read Freakonomics by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner. Normally, I hate economics. You could show me that damn supply and demand graph over and over, and I still won't grasp its concepts. (Okay, I understand the graph when it's static, but I get lost when the lines move.) So it's nice to see an economist use a plain language approach.

You can tell a lot about this book by its cover. It's no coincidence that Malcolm Gladwell's blurb "Prepared to be dazzled" gets the front and center treatment. Freakonomics caters to the same unorthodox way of thinking as do Mr. Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Blink, and all three make dry data and research more palatable to the curious masses. Then there's that image. The text never makes reference to it, but the authors show that you can, in fact, compare apples to oranges (and they're not so different).

Unlike Mr. Gladwell, however, the authors of Freakonomics have some theories that will be viewed as wildly unpopular. In various chapters, they take aim at real estate agents, teachers, and parents, and speak of them in the same breath as, say, Klan members, sumo wrestlers, and drug dealers. While they claim to have no overriding theme, they do repeatedly knock conventional wisdom, which they see as an unholy alliance between journalists and experts, both of whom act in their self-interests to simplify the complex. (Please recall that these guys are themselves an expert and a journalist.) For an almost academic text, it's a great deal of fun.

Next up: a series of San Francisco travel guides.