Freakonomics

Revised Edition

By: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Narrated by: Stephen J. Dubner

Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2006 Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (P)2006 HarperAudio

Critic reviews

"Refreshingly accessible and engrossing." (Publishers Weekly)

Good, but be careful

As a PhD statistician, I love a good data-driven story. Increasing, people in politics, business, and academia are looking for decisions that are based on what the data say. Leavitt's research is engaging and accessible and I, for the most part, enjoyed this book.

HOWEVER, without exception, Leavitt presents his findings as gospel and continually fails to acknowledge the limitations of his methods and his data. He mentions his use of linear regression to obtain his results, but fails to mention the limitations of this method (e.g., results are probabilistic, results are based on model assumptions which may be entirely incorrect). His results obtained from this method sometimes also appear to tell too convenient of a story and seem to be cherry-picked. Moreover, all his results are based on single data sets and may not be as universal as he would like. Finally, he often takes one result (e.g., reading to your kids does not affect their standardized test scores) and makes huge, sweeping generalizations that lead you to believe that reading to your kids doesn't have any affect on any outcome of interest and that you're a bad (or naive) parent for even trying.

These are dangerous practices, though I can see why he does what he does - making all sort of caveats would water-down his findings and make his book less sensational. Nevertheless, he runs the risk of misleading his readers. Judging from the comments posted here so far from people who assume these conclusions are certain, I would say he's succeeded in this endeavor.

If you like the podcast, this is more of the same

I like what these guys present, and it felt like an extended podcast, some of it I thought had heard in the podcast, but also other stuff, so not a rehash (or pre hash). Not an unworthy purchase.

The subject of nightmares made approachable

Love when the author is the one reading it. Their passion for the topic usually comes through, and that held true here. Great demystifification of a normally daunting subject.

I have a background in engineering, so I didn't want an in depth, numbers based econ lesson, but I do want to broaden my horizons and at least expose myself to the world of economics. This book will show you a friendlier, more layman approach to economics that, while I'm not going to go out and get my MBA because of it, gave me a fresh way to look at the subject and a bit more perspective about the ubiquity of incentives as a driving force of human behavior.

I don't think the point here is whether or not you agree 100% with the examples and the conclusions drawn, but that you explore it with an open mind and consider the ingenuity behind their approach and think about how you can explain other behaviors you find interesting and assumed previously to be inexplicable.

Eyes wide open...

Based on numbers and facts not opinion and feelings.
This book validated some things I always thought to be true and opened my eyes to things I did not know. Great book.

Promotes out of the box thinking

I am 15 years old, and I didn’t find this book slow or boring, which says a lot! I was intrigued with each different topic in the story, and while it sometimes wasn’t clear what the point was, the author did a great job of explaining what the style of the book is going to be in the introduction. If you want a clearly outlined book with obvious conclusions, it’s not for you, but if you’re looking for something to get you thinking about the field of economics and how to ask interesting questions, it’s a must read! Some people are saying it’s not unified, but there is a chapter in the book saying that this book is not about one unifying topic. It’s about considering how we can use data to ask interesting questions, and how we can fix world problems by approaching sciences with an exploratory lense and not a confirmatory one. I highly recommend!

very over hyped bunch of stories

first off, what's with the random appearances of annoying jingles in the middle of the chapters?
second off, although the author warns the reader that the book is a bunch of unrelated blog posts mashed together to become a book, it is still deeply disappointing.
So much fluff, its almost unbearable.
the author poses a number of questions in the beginning of the book to which he promises to deliver answers. And he does, but the way to get to the answers is way too long. Most of the questions posed deserve a single word answer, and still somehow it was a 5 hour book.

I find this, so called book, amusing because basically the whole of it is somewhat concisely delivered in the last chapter, truly the reader doesn't need the first 4 hours of blubbering.

Great book with one annoying caveat.

This book goes out of its way to inform the customer that it has no theme. I disagree. It spends a lot of energy on racial disparity, although that's far from the only subject covered. That said, it does an excellent job of proving the conditions that give rise to that disparity and many other situations having nothing to do with race. But it returns to that theme often. That would be fine with me under most circumstances, but the book incorporates two quotations containing the "n word" that I found to be superfluous. These were not meant to offend the reader/listener or to create controversy; however, I do think the authors anticipated some shock value (one quote was from a KKK member and the other a black gang member, which were both the subjects of objective and insightful data analysis). The book would have lost nothing important without them. They were not needed and should have been avoided. For the record, I'm a white male. Regardless of my feelings about this, the book is definitely worth reading and is highly effective in dispelling myths and prejudices that have taken root in the minds of ignorant people. It is jam packed with amazing facts that everyone should be aware of.

book has a lot of white privilege in it

too much white privilege and too much judgement from the gaze of well-off white men.

Surprisingly "blah"

This book has been on my "to do" list for years. Maybe it's because I'm a sociologist by trade, or because the book was originally published a decade ago, but I found the book surprisingly "blah" for waiting this long to read it.
Please note I still give it 4 stars because it's a good book and a good narration, and perhaps to those who don't already know most of these statistics it would be more interesting. I would have loved to see shorter chapters and more issues tackled. And ps I also agree with the foreword that the NY Times articles are quite narcissistic to include every chapter, so I appreciate they moved it to the end in the republished copy.

I would recommend this

Content was intriguing. Dubner's performance was good. Didn't like musical interludes that covered some words.