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.