Sunday, January 3, 2010

Book #83: Superfreakonomics

Title: Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
Author: Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

If you read and enjoyed Freakonomics or any of the recent Malcolm Gladwell books (The Tipping Point, Outliers, etc...) then you'll likely enjoy Superfreakonomics. It's full of interesting tidbits about why condoms fail in India more than in other parts of the world, why prostitution isn't as lucrative a field as it was a century ago, or why the solution to global warming involves nothing more than a long garden hose. I read it in a few hours (which makes me feel that it wasn't worth the price for the hardcover), and while it's got a lot of splashy facts, I think I'm sort of tired of this genre of books-- the "things aren't really as they seem" field of economics/parenting/social networking that seems so popular lately (think Nurtureshock). But Superfreakonomics is what it is, and as an example of the genre it's pretty good, but not $29.99 worth of good.

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