Freaky, eh?

Have you ever wondered what a street prostitute and a department-store Santa have in common? Has it ever occurred to you that suicide bombers should buy life insurance? Do you think altruism is part of human nature, and do you think it could be measured in economic terms? Ever thought about how some of the simplest things are part of the biggest solutions? Do you ask yourself, "What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?"

Yeah. Me either...
But you're curious now, aren't you?

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner explore these ideas in Super Freakonomics. After much success with Freakonomics, they decided to do some research and put together another collection of strange-but-true findings.

I found Super Freakonomics to be interesting, but it wasn't the best book for this assignment. Being a "Book Length Argument", I don't think there was a very strong argument that ties the whole book together. They wrote in the Explanatory Note at the beginning that the theme for both books was that humans respond to incentives. This argument is prevalent, but they do not blatantly tie that message in to each chapter, so it's not a very obvious theme.

I also found this book to have a sort of jumpy nature. It was difficult to follow the thought process occasionally; it all came together by the end of the chapter...but there were times when I had completely lost sight of the message. The chapter titles are sometimes a bit misleading as well, because the question the title asks is only briefly answered. However, it is necessary that they spend time giving background information and research findings before they come to the conclusion, so I think it's appropriate that they only briefly address the chapter's title directly.

What makes the book so interesting is that the author's cover topics and answer questions you've never really asked yourself, and they make strange connections. They make use of statistics and figures to demonstrate how their research was conducted and how they went about composing experiments. This is good for their credibility, but it is also interesting to see how the process works and what types of results they get back. I would also say they use the fact that their first book, Freakonomics, was so successful, to build on their character and credibility.

The book is split up into five chapters, covering the five topics I mentioned at the beginning. You could probably read the book backwards, if you wanted, because they do not connect each chapter to one another in a way that would limit the order of you reading them. This is because chapter covers an entirely different topic with entirely different research and background. It's almost like five mini-books bound into one.

And even though it's about economics, it's not the type of economics that typically comes to mind. It's also easy to understand; sometimes they use "economic jargon", but they always clarify what it means, and they put it in friendly terms that makes it understandable by anyone. They also have a tone that is direct, and that makes it humorous at times.

Overall, I would recommend this book. There were times when I laughed out loud reading it, I found myself being kind of impressed by the processes, and surprised at some of the outcomes. I haven't read Freakonomics yet (kind of like the chapters, it's not necessary to read them in order), but it's sitting on my bedside table next to The Fault In Our Stars, and I plan on reading it soon.