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Freakonomics Rev Ed CD: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything | 
 enlarge | Author: Steven D. Levitt
Creator: Stephen J. Dubner
Publisher: HarperAudio
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
Buy New: $19.50
You Save: $15.45 (44%)
New (24) from $19.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  1570 reviews
Sales Rank: 38791
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Una Rev Ex
Number Of Items: 7
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 0061238538
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN: 9780061238536
ASIN: 0061238538
Publication Date: October 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe
Product Description
Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Thus the new field of study contained in this audiobook: Freakonomics. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they explore the hidden side of . . . well, everything. The inner working of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The secrets of the Klu Klux Klan. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking, and Freakonomics will redefine the way we view the modern world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1565 more reviews...
 Great and funny book October 12, 2008
I read this book and then passed it along to someone else - it is a great book and very funny - most people I have spoken to - don't finish - don't go in with the right attitude - but it is a way to compare how society looks at certain things for what is right and wrong - good or bad - when you understand the premises of the book - then you get it right away - have fun with this book - don't let the author's career choices scare you - they have a great sense of humor.
 Debunked October 11, 2008
Some of the notions that the author presents as fact in this book have been debunked. This author has no credibility any more.
 Good book, but I'm not sure if I learned anything October 5, 2008
The books was well written, but I'm not really sure how much I've learned from it.
 Neo-Liberalism with a Human Smirk October 2, 2008
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Author Steven Levitt is a recently graduated chef from the Culinary Institute of Elitist Capitalism, AKA The University of Chicago. Freakonomics is a kind of nouvelle cuisine version of economic modeling and game-theory as practiced by the disciples of Milty Friedman, but rather little of the book is spent on economic recipes per se, once the basic assertion has been made that "incentives' are the yeast that cause all human behavior to rise. Rather, Levitt puts everything from soup kitchens to swimming pools through the blender of statistics -- the very sort of statistical analysis used by the authors of The Bell Curve and discredited by Stephen Jay Gould in the book The Mismeasurement of Man, the very sort of statistics that can be used to prove that the older you get in Miami, the more likely you are to be Jewish.
Levitt's basic dough: Start with John Stuart Mill and every other 19th C liberal social theorist. Knead thoroughly into a sticky paste. Add a handful of candied fruit in the form of the more radical 19th C postulators - Fourier, Henry George, Bellamy, and Karl Marx as understood before the Russian Revolution. Soften the dough with as much Thorstein Veblen as you can remember. Spice it with generous amounts of scorn for "them" - anthropologists, psychologists, and others who think that human behavior is shaped by more impulses than acquisition and that specific cultural 'memes' play a role. Half-bake the dough in a journalistic oven with the temperature set on SELL. Frost the loaf with an icing of Ayn Rand super-individualism. But don't expect the finished cake to be much different from cakes you've eaten before. There's nothing new in Freakonomics except the smirky style.
Honestly, many readers might find this book stimulating, or over-stimulating, depending on their prior convictions. Go on! Read it! But read it with the same skepticism you'd apply to the gospel of any other religion than your own - Shinto, Islam, Swedenborgian, Leninist, Maoist. This is a book where the reader will be easily tricked into mistaking polemics for proof.
Freakonomics September 30, 2008
This is an entertaining look at economics and gave valid views on how our systems works.
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