Review: Superfreakonomics, by Steven Levitt
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
MCL. Audio.
This is not such a great book for audio when one has small children around. Cough, obviously I should have figured that out by the subtitle, but little did I realize when I began that that second item in the subtitle should encompass two out of six of the CDs, and come up periodically throughout. Also, a quote here or there, without warning beforehand, would include crudities. It wouldn’t be the sort of thing that would bother me too much if I was reading it, but it was not the sort of thing I want spoken in my house with children.
That caveat given, it was still not as enjoyable as Blink. The authors spent more time developing how to do economics and how one sets up proper studies than in developing their interesting finds.
However, I do feel better for knowing that people are not naturally altruistic (of course), that people modify their behavior when they are being observed (duh), that pimps provide their clients more value than realtors provide theirs, that for children over 2 seatbelts are just as safe as carseats, that doctors only wash their hands a fraction of the time they should, and that environmentalists are religious rather than reasonable about their hypotheses (to have a solution to global warming that does not involve human behavior change is heresy, even though human behavior accounts for a minute percentage of emissions).
It had its moments, but overall I didn’t care for it much.
