My latest read – Superfreakonomics

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Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have released SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance a long awaited follow up to their hit Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

If you enjoyed Freakonomics (my review here) or even Sudir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, the runaway hit from chapter three, then you will enjoy SuperFreakonomics.

I recall learning the book would be released in late 2009 but as soon as I saw it on the shelf I picked up a copy and began reading that night.  They have done another great job exploring new datasets.  Most readers will enjoy reading the data underlying a murder in New York of a woman in-front of 38 witnesses. Nobody called the police for help.  They explore what this says about society.  The book is more of the same: exploring the hidden side of everything.

From comparing street prostitution to a department store Santa to why suicide bombers should buy life insurance, Levitt and Dubner succeed in sharing unique datasets and telling a compelling story.  How did television empower women in India?  On the surface it may sound strange until you consider how they tell the story.

They provide inspiration as well. Their segment ‘The garden hose to the sky’ about global warming sounds funny on the surface until they share the idea is from Microsoft’s former technology director.  He is the principal owner in a scientific research firm that is developing tools to cool the earth.  It gets more interesting when you learn Bill Gates is an investor in the company.

Touching the research by Venkatesh regarding prostitution their review of Chicago’s historical prostitution brothels was more of a compelling story of how women made incredible amounts of money in the 1800s and the heart and soul of Chicago politics.

Regarding ‘The Fix is in and its Cheap and Simple’ runs around issues of health care.  I found it amazing reading about some of the Chicago area hospitals and their lack of quality care.  True frightening when I recall living in Chicago during these incidents.  The biggest was the summer heat wave that killed over 100 in 1995.  This was written in more detail by Eric Klinenberg’s Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Illinois).

Clearly Levitt and Dubner are talented in analyzing data and telling compelling stories.  I look forward to SuperDUPERFreakonomics.

Tags: SUPERFreakonomics, Stephen Dubner, Steven Levitt, Economics, datasets, , energy, population, poverty, technology, Sudir Venkatesh, terrorist, trends