Economics has never looked so good
This week’s book is all about economics or, namely, what studying economic data can tell us about the crazy world in which we live. It’s a non-fiction book co-written by economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner and they really are a great team, not just in terms of writing but also research, ideas and mindset.
Published in 2005, Freakonomics is not a standalone print phenomenon. Their (amazingly-named) sequel, Superfreakonomics, followed in 2009 and there is also a great Freakonomics blog which you can find here, which helps the duo overcome the stagnation that content such as this can run into, as the world, data and research are changing every day. Indeed, this copy, reprinted by Penguin Classics in 2006, is a bumper extended edition – complete with snippets from the blog, new preface and select columns from their original publication in The New York Times – and offers a tweaked perspective from the original as the world has marched steadily on.
If you’ve read “economics” at the beginning of this blog post and are ready to run away screaming from this book – wait just a sec. You may think that to enjoy this book you have to already know something about how economics works and have to be a maths genius. I am painfully bad at maths (I used to read novels under the table in my high school maths lessons) – I simply just don’t get it. Comfortingly, the economist co-author of the two, Levitt, is abysmal at calculus and is certainly not an economist in the traditional sense of the word. As a result, Freakonomics is one of those very accessibly-written books that aims to debunk “conventional wisdom” and present facts in the form of interesting and cleverly-written narratives (it even made me chuckle out loud in various places).
So, you don’t have to be exclusively interested in numbers to read this book, you simply have to enjoy asking a lot of unusual questions and be curious about the answers. Tackled within this book are strange ponderings such as: “What do estate agents and the Ku Klux Klan have in common?”, “Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers?” and “How can your name affect how well you do in life?”. Trivia and popular science/sociology/history are areas that have always interested me so this book is already right up my alley. But, I think, it is a great read for newbies to popular non-fiction (I also recommend anything by Bill Bryson) if you’re into learning about how the world may really work underneath all the misconceptions. I think the title goes a long way in attracting all kinds of readers as it’s fun and turns the word economics on it’s head.
I love that Freakonomics is a fluid and continuous project rather than being just one book published ten years ago (2005 doesn’t feel like ten years ago – scary!). I think that the blog – i.e. the chance to stay relevant and to update their research as new theories and data become available – greatly benefits the readers, and even the general public as sharing online content is so easy and fast (my Facebook newsfeed is now 60% shared stories and articles, I’m sure). I am slightly obsessed with free, online learning (and am eternally grateful that free content on the Internet is able to exist and I am able to have access to it) and how much of our knowledge is often riddled with conventional wisdom (yes, I’m one of those annoying people who likes to correct common misconceptions, usually prefaced with “Um, actually…”). I think it’s incredibly important to keep questioning what we think is true and having this handy blog to hand is one way of doing in our day to day lives, including those of us who don’t really like reading print books/can’t afford to buy them all the time. Also, I didn’t ever want the book to end, so I’m extremely glad that I can get my knowledge fix on Freakonomics blog with some regularity (plus it helps that Superfreakonomics is already on my wishlist!).
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