Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

This book is a worthy, and in my view a better, successor to the original "Freakonomics". I found the original book fascinating, but ultimately frustrating because after good beginnings it lost its way and felt light on content. The second book avoids that problem, keeping the thought provoking analysis and insights coming all the way.

The new book has a very broad scope - trying to understand the economics and human psychology which drive aspects of human existence as disparate as female oppression and prostitution, terrorism, effective medical treatment, altruism, vehicle safety, and global problems such as climate change.

As before, Levitt and Dubner spend a lot of time challenging received wisdom, citing detailed research and comprehensive data which prove that in many cases our common understanding of how things work "just ain't so". Typically the underlying research is not their own, but they have done a wonderful job of bringing together a larger number of different findings into a set of readily readable chapters, each of which have a strong unifying theme in the form of a key question. My favourite: "What Do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo Have In Common?"

Towards the end of the book, they also make an interesting proposition, that a large number of human problems can be resolved with relatively simple solutions, if we have the will to make it happen. The adoption of seat belts is cited as a major previous success, and the idea is then developed to explore several possible relatively low-cost geo-engineering solutions to global warming. Views may differ on how humanity must balance behavioural and technical solutions to its current challenges, but their argument is a strong one, based on a frank and realistic assessment of typical behaviour.

As a counterpoint, the final chapter recounts an experiment which proved that much of human economic behaviour can be replicated in other animals. I just loved the story of the monkeys who were introduced to the concept of money, and promptly invented prostitution!

Despite the range and depth of the subject matter, the book is always readable, with frequent "laugh out loud" moments. Anyone can pick up this book, enjoy it and take away an improved understanding of the underlying drivers for human (and monkey) behaviour. I freely recommend it to anybody interested in doing so.

More of the same. But is it too samey? (0/0 people found this helpful)

Super Freakonomics is of course the follow up to Levitt and Dubner's highly entertaining Freakonomics- a faced paced sociological study of modern life viewed through the filter of economics and statistics. Even though Super Freakonomics is a better book than it's predecessor, being more funny, more edgy, and generally more interesting, it might fail to hold your attention if you have read the first book. In a nutshell it is more of the same, which is both its strength and its weakness. If you haven't read Freakonomics, buy this book and enjoy. If you have, don't be expected to be blown away... again.

Global (0/0 people found this helpful)

Superfreakonomics

By Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner

A review by the Cote'd Azur Men's Book Group

When you have published a book and it becomes a best seller around the world, what is your next trick? Well, after counting the money and recognising you have struck a gold lode, you write a successor and hopefully hit the jackpot again!
That is just what Steven D Levitt an economist and his writing companion journalist Stephen J Dubner expect to do with the publication of Superfreakonomics a lateral thinking yet tongue- in-cheek reaction to many of today's official announcements of doom and gloom
Readers of a more serious mind may find this book too comic in tone and style to be acceptable but it uses a satirical pen to assess the value and worth of the many governmental statements on the forecast world crisis ahead.
It is a good example of the difference between American and English writing in that the text is not over burdened with the verbiage of some academically schooled writers. Rather it is sharp and incisive and it led to a lengthy debate between members of the Cote d'Azur Men's Book Group.
The menu ranges from Why Should Suicide Bombers buy Life Insurance, How is a Street Prostitute like a department store Santa, to What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common? An electic collection and one that has a common denominator in that it covers almost all the doom laden messages publicly broadcast by world governments over many years, from the global cooling warning of the early seventies to today's pet campaign that has turned global warning into a sort of campaign led by the Green lobby headed by Al Gore and gleefully backed by politicians eager to capitalise and introduce new taxes to reduce toxic pollution and emissions of carbon dioxide
Levitt and Dubner admit that GW is a uniquely thorny problem and point out that the imprecision inherent in the necessary science means we cannot know for sure what temperatures. will be in ten years time.
They say that the movement to stop GW has taken on the feel of a religion and the core belief is that humankind has sinned by polluting a pristine Eden.
It is pointed out that long before man arrived on Earth the planet was so naturally thick with methane gas that it was nearly lifeless.

ENDS

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Not as good as the original (0/0 people found this helpful)

If you liked the original you will like this - it is undoubtedly better that a lot of the copycat books out there, but I felt a bit short-changed when I finished it, mainly because I felt I had read a lot of it before.

A large portion of one of the chapters - the one one on prostitution - was placed in The Sunday Times as a promotion for the book.

Most of the ideas written about in the last proper chapter - the environmental ideas from IV - have been covered in quite a few other articles that I have read, and the authors didn't add anything to them.

So, whilst there were definitely some very interesting parts I didn't feel that I had learnt that much. When I finished the first book I felt like I had learnt loads.

Not as good as freakonomics (1/1 people found this helpful)

An enjoyable book that covers some unusual subjects but is not as good as the original freakonomics book.

This one goes into a lot more detail on a single subject and as a result is not as wide-ranging, and does at times feel as if its trying to imply that the reader cannot draw their own conclusions from the initial information provided. The original Freakonomics book didnt go into as much details and left the reader able to draw their own conclusions from the outline facts rather than having everything spelled out for you.

I like the Freakonomic books but if you are new to these then the original is the better of the two in my view.

Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Reader Reviews:

Fascinating, fun, and more depth than the first book (0/0 people found this helpful)

More of the same. But is it too samey? (0/0 people found this helpful)

Global (0/0 people found this helpful)

Not as good as the original (0/0 people found this helpful)

Not as good as freakonomics (1/1 people found this helpful)

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