| | |  | | Home » Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance | | | | | | | Description: | | The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary? SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: - How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?
- Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands?
- How much good do car seats do?
- What's the best way to catch a terrorist?
- Did TV cause a rise in crime?
- What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?
- Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?
- Can eating kangaroo save the planet?
- Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor?
Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is – good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over – but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Steven D. Levitt | | Hardcover:
| 288 pages | | Publisher:
| William Morrow | | Publication Date:
| October 20, 2009 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0060889578 | | Product Length:
| 9.34 inches | | Product Width:
| 6.5 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.09 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.96 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.25 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.2 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.1 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.95 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 381 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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138 of 156 found the following review helpful:
 The idea is to make you THINK!Jan 05, 2010
By Rick Wingender
I had to laugh as I read some of the negative reviews. Listen people, it's not intended to be a TEXTBOOK, nor is it written like one, thankfully. I've read both books. Super Freakonomics is a good exercise in critical thinking (something that is becoming sorely lacking in the age of American Idol, thanks to our putrid public schools and Playstation parenting); it makes you think about a lot of "truths" that we take for granted. For example, this book actually made me change some of my thinking about global warming. The book is super-interesting, and full of information that you'd be hard-pressed to find in your typical daily reading; and, it "sexes-up" the fields of microeconomics and behavioral economics. One of the points (relentlessly made) is how we (especially our governments) seem to prefer complex, costly solutions to problems, when cheaper, simpler solutions often exist, and the book does a great job of providing many examples of this. Is it a definitive tome on the many topics it covers? No - again, it's not a textbook, but it was definitely worth the time I spent reading it - I hated putting it down.
44 of 49 found the following review helpful:
 more of the same, which is great if you liked the first oneJan 01, 2010
By Carrie Dunham-LaGree
"nomadreader"
Superfreakonomics is the follow-up to the wildly successful Freakonomics, which I thoroughly enjoyed. This edition is more of the same. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one. If you didn't, then you probably won't. If you haven't read either, read the first one. This one is interesting, mostly, but the last chapter was a bit of a drag for me. There are some fascinating theories, statistics and illustrations. For the fans of their New York Times blog, however, there's not much that's new. The first book was a novelty, and a fascinating interdisciplinary one. This book is clearly a concerted effort, and it's enjoyable, but I recall random trivia and interesting points rather than the overarching themes. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely. Will I still talk about it at dinner parties in five years as I still talk about some of the theories in the first one? Well, I will reference one specific chapter.
In short, I loved it, although not quite as much as the first one.
386 of 483 found the following review helpful:
 A tired formula.Oct 21, 2009
By Mobius
I gave a positive review to the first Freakonomics. That book distilled some 10 years of academic research by Mr. Levitt, and it was already stretched a bit thin. Levitt does not have another 10 years of research to convert into a second book, so instead we get a collection of magazine articles with cutesy "counterintuitive" angles to them. I know a popular book like this can't be expected to be completely rigorous, but what I've learned about Levitt since the first book has left me less willing to take him at face value. For example his famous study of the link between abortion and crime was later shown to suffer from a programming error in which he neglected to properly normalize a series of crime statistics. When the error was corrected, the trumpeted correlation went away. Levitt responded by re-jiggering his assumptions in a complicated way so he could keep his original conclusions intact. He certainly doesn't make his readers aware of how much subjectivity is in his analysis, and he gives short shrift to legitimate alternate interpretations. Without the penumbra of credibility Levitt enjoyed from his work in econometrics, he's just another moderately amusing magazine writer who shouldn't be taken too seriously.
21 of 24 found the following review helpful:
Economics can be FunJan 25, 2010
By Andrew Desmond
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It sheds light on why I bothered studying for a degree in economics at university. Yes, economics can be fun. It's a pity it gets such a bum rap. Why should it be called the "dismal science"?
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have written an amusing and readable book. It's full of anecdotes and whimsical stories without ever seriously veering from the science of microeconomics which is its basis. The two Steves have researched an array of topics from street prostitution, to hospital deaths in the 19the century before opining upon global warming and how it might be resolved if, indeed, it is a problem. It's this final point that I particularly loved. Global warming has become a modern religion. It has its own dogmas and turns a blind eye to anyone who questions the "rules". I am quite confident that, in due course, global warming will be solved but it won't be by the naïve and cack handed solutions that greens put forward. It will be economics that comes to the rescue. This has always been the history of the world and I see no reason why this should change now.
Perhaps the most pleasant feature of "SuperFreakonomics" (and its predecessor "Freakonomics") is that it brings economics away from the realm of stuffy ivory towered professors and their arcane theories and formulas. Instead, economics is presented as something to enjoy. This is the book's real strength. I can only hope that this technique has introduced economics to a wider audience.
However, before finishing up, I find myself wondering which of the "case studies" amused me the most. I think it was the story about travel in New York City and how horses caused more deaths per capita than cars. It's ironic then that the car is seen as the work of the devil by some when, in fact, it has been a great liberator of the human race. Yes, "SuperFreakonomics" is a great read. Read it and enjoy.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
People Respond to IncentivesApr 26, 2010
By AdamSmythe
This easy-to-read book, a sequel to Freakonomics, is intended to illustrate a variety of economic concepts, especially to the lay person. I'll mention and describe a few of these in a minute, but first it's important to understand what this book is and is not. First, this is a sequel, so if you enjoyed the original book more for its unorthodox style than its underlying message that people respond to incentives, then that same style incorporated into this book may not seem as fresh to you. On the other hand, if you enjoyed the interesting data mining examples in Freakonomics, you will find many more in this book. Second, this book is not a formal economic analysis of anything. If it were, it would likely have plenty of equations with lots of Greek letters, and it wouldn't be particularly interesting for most people to read, unless you have a very detailed and specific interest in the subject. Finally, because the book is intended to be entertaining for all those people who associate economics with the expression "dismal science," the authors use a very lively style and choose unconventional, though real world, examples to illustrate their points. (By the way, the term "dismal science" comes from some of the less-than-cheery conclusions of some early economists, like David Ricardo, who thought worldwide population would grow exponentially while agricultural output grew arithmetically, until starvation became a limiting factor to population growth.)
So economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner set out to explain how prostitutes practice "price discrimination," which refers to the way sellers charge different customers different prices for essentially the same service. Perhaps a more common example would be a car manufacturer that slaps a few upgrades on a basic car, brands the (somewhat) upgraded car differently (think Buick versus Chevrolet, for example), and then charges a significantly higher price for a not-that-different product. This strategy, when practiced successfully, allows manufacturers to capitalize on the willingness of some people to pay more than others for essentially the same product.
The list of economic concepts that are illustrated by various interesting examples is long. There is the concept of "externalities," where some of the costs (or benefits) of the production of a good or service cannot be easily reflected in its price. A common example is the cost of pollution that flows downstream from a paper mill, for example. Other concepts--and these are all important ones for citizens to understand when they vote for politicians seeking public office--include "creative destruction," revealed (versus declared) preferences, comparative advantage (upon which much of world trade is based), the principal-agent problem and others.
The book incorporates a fling with some controversy, including its coverage of global warming, although most of the discussion is more informative than controversial. Did you know, for example, that sulfur dioxide that makes it through the lower levels of the earth's atmosphere (the troposphere) all the way up into the stratosphere can spread out and essentially blanket the earth to the point that it contributes to global cooling, not warming. That's why when a major volcanic eruption sends sulfur high into the atmosphere the earth actually cools somewhat. The authors introduce and discuss at some length a company, Intellectually Ventures, founded by Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer at Microsoft under Bill Gates. Myhrvold and his associates are actually working on ways to combat global warming (and to help limit the strength of brewing hurricanes) through simple, truly unconventional procedures.
In conclusion, if you are looking for strict and precise science, I'd suggest that look elsewhere. However, if you would enjoy a sometimes lighthearted, yet fundamentally reasonable, approach to understanding what economics means to the average person in everyday life, this is a good choice.
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