Fun read and a good introduction to economics. -- Travis R.

I mulled over how to review this book for about a week, but finally I decided just to write what came to mind.

Overall, I enjoyed the unorthodox way of viewing the world that Freakonomics provides. It's refreshing to try and view the world through a less conventional lens and see what new insights I could gain from it. I remember in high school how one of my teachers introduced us to a selection of the last chapter on white names and black names, and the Winner/Loser dichotomy left such an impression on me that I decided to perform a little experiment on my cat by calling it unpleasant names in a pleasant voice. The goal was to determine if it was the word that mattered or whether it was the way it was said that would change my cat's behavior. Naturally, not being a very rigorously designed experiment, I didn't learn very much.

With that said, this book does seem a little overly impressed with itself. Each chapter starts with a third-person perspective on Levitt that tries to paint him as an objective, nerdy oddball with the Harvard world both against him and simultaneously in deep admiration of him. It's a nerd fantasy, and an inconsistent one at that. In the early chapters he doesn't fit in with the elite economists, but in another chapter his dress code is described as "high nerd," as if he is one of their model representatives. It would be one thing if these discrepancies were used to show his personal growth from how Freakonomics has changed his own world perspective, but they are simply left unexplained.

More importantly though, I'm not sure how true these claims are. I was so fascinated by the chapter on how a whistleblower used information to trivialize the KKK that I Googled it to learn more... only to discover that Levitt and Dubner's claims have been widely criticized by both academics and the people they interviewed. When I considered how this book is written--as if each of their claims is a fact rather than disputed (which is what real scientific research is more like) and with little attention given to the source of their statistics--I decided to side with the critics. When the book's selling point is that Levitt stands on some convenient fantasy middleground which somehow offends both "liberals" and "conservatives" (neither of which Dubner bothers to really define) so that he emerges as a shining beacon of apolitical truth, then it's probably too good to be true. Sorry, but from my experience, just about everything can become political.

My final verdict is that I'd say it is entertaining reading, but its value is questionable beyond that.

While I found this book a very enjoyable read, I have grave reservations about it's overall impact. Its treatment of specific issues is well-reasoned and insightful, but its self-aggrandizing notion of the fledgling field of "Freakonomics" is a bit over the top. This book would be better titled: "Freakonomics: Thinking Really Hard About a Few Unrelated Topics." There is very little novelty in looking at an issue and teasing out the distinctions between correlation and causation. Though, admittedly, this may be a useful lesson to folks unaccustomed to thinking critically about hidden causal connections, this book won't impress the kind of reader most likely drawn to it in the first place--a critical thinker.

This is not to say that Levitt's arguments aren't compelling, or that the sort of buckshot of issues he chooses relevant, but merely to say that the overarching notion that this is a new way of thinking is unjustified. Barring that criticism, however, this is a worthwhile read--not life-changing, as the authors might have you believe, but at the very least thought-provoking and discussion-worthy.

Op zelffeliciterende toon een paar Statistics-101 onderzoekjes op een rij zetten maakt nog geen goed boek; laat staan een zogenaamd nieuw concept als 'Freakonomics'

That’s it?

Boring, shallow, collection of factoids. The only interesting part of this book is that it emphasizes the importance of incentives when thinking about behavior

Sorry for being a snob but this could only be revelatory for especially incurious readers

Dismal science indeed

Essentially, this book is a series of short lectures about fundamental economic principles, made understandable to the lay person by their interpretation through the dynamics of everyday life. It's a gimmick, yes, but it's quite an effective one, for what it is. And it should make home sellers more wary of their estate agents' interests, at least.