Freakonomics
A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
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4.2 • 212 Ratings
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
'A sensation ... you'll be stimulated, provoked and entertained. Of how many books can that be said?' Sunday Telegraph
'Prepare to be dazzled' Malcolm Gladwell
WITH A NEW FOREWORD CELEBRATING 20 YEARS SINCE PUBLICATION
Assume nothing, question everything.
This is the message at the heart of Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner's rule-breaking, iconoclastic book about crack dealers, cheating teachers and bizarre baby names that turned everyone's view of the world upside-down and became an international multi-million-copy-selling phenomenon.
Asking provocative and profound questions about human motivation, Freakonomics will make you see the familiar world through a completely original lens.
'Has you chuckling one minute and gasping in amazement the next' Wall Street Journal
Customer Reviews
Fantastic
I have the paper copy of this book and it's absolutely fantastic. Gives a very different angle to view the world from, and some of the links between everyday things are amazing! Well worth the money :)
A few too many repititions
Whilst the majority of this book is very insightful, the introduction, main articles, and "extras" at the end all mention the same problems and the same data. Chapters 1 & 2 are very good, but the book seems to lose it's way by chapter 4 (and chapter 6 is mainly tables of data)
A large problem is that the formatting isn't great - tables of data stretch over too many pages and the contents contains footnotes.
A good book but repetition and bad formatting spoil it.
Extremely Overblown
The authors have a very high opinion of themselves and their methods as economists, and so try to apply rational choice models to all aspects of life. What they don’t realise is that they’ve produced an extremely amateur piece of sociology. Many other professionals have covered these topics - especially crime - with the thoughtfulness they deserve. (Wikipedia also tells me they acknowledged many of their findings to be wrong, but corrections were not forthcoming in the latest edition.)