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Good read for people looking to read non fictions and learn more about how the world works
Levitt and Dubner are doing such amazing things in their work. I loved Freakonomics, I loved SuperFreakonomics, and I'm sure I'm going to love Think Like A Freak. I have never read anything more interesting than these books.
Levitt and Dubner use the miracle of economics to dig up more counter-intuitive insights into our culture, but this trip is a little more flighty. There are other sources where you will find information challenging accepted science on global warming, pointing out the correlation between birth date and athletic success, and questions on why doctors cause so much sickness.
What I missed from this book was any big ideas to match the gee-whiz economics.
What I missed from this book was any big ideas to match the gee-whiz economics.
This was a disappointing title for a number of reasons. It's very short. A lot of the material seems to have been covered in other recent books by better writers. The section global warming was both absurd and intellectually dishonest.
Yeah, I'll give this book a solid 3.5 stars. It's effective in what it sets out to accomplish: in an accessible, friendly way, to show (through economic strategies) random topics in a refreshing new light. I don't get the sense the book is trying to be an exhaustive economic treatise. It's just some light fun, meant to broaden the average reader's understanding of the world by pointing out some unexpected causes/correlations.
Not as mind-blowing as the first book, read many years ago. But some new interesting examples and a reminder that we live in a really complex world but situations can be analyzed based on a few simple economic rules...incentives, cost-benefit analysis, externalities, and unintended consequences. I like when they stick to smaller quirky scenarios instead of the big items like climate change. While they do a good job at explaining the difficulty of individual behavioral change, it doesn't give proper treatment to the history, politics, power, and macro issues to really be able to stick their foot into those waters.