When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Summary: "Over the past decade, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have published more than 8,000 blog posts on Freakonomics.com. Many of them, they freely admit, were rubbish. But now they’ve gone through and picked the best of the best. You’ll discover what people lie about, and why; the best way to cut gun deaths; why it might be time for a sex tax; and, yes, when to rob a bank. (Short answer: never; the ROI is terrible.) You’ll also learn a great deal about Levitt and Dubner’s own quirks and passions, from gambling and golf to backgammon and the abolition of the penny." -Amazon

I fell in love with Freakonomics through the podcast.  You can find all of the episodes (and listen for free) in their archive.  I highly recommend it.

I have read each of the books in the Freakonomics line, and this one might be my favorite.  The short, often snarky entries in this compilation held my interest while also challenging a lot of my thinking, and the writing is straightforward, making the complicated subjects and theories easily accessible.

If you've never read or listened to anything from Freakonomics, the overall point is to take real-world problems or questions and look at them through the super-logical eyes of economists.  This can be harsh, as emotion is not an economists friend, but sometimes removing emotion is the only way to really dissect the human condition and the nuance of life.

Again, I HIGHLY recommend the podcast.  As for this book, it is a collection of their blog posts, which you can read here.  So find one that interests you, read it, and if you want more - go for this book.

4/5

400 pages

Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy by Sudhir Venkatesh

(Posted for Paul Mathews)

While attending Columbia University, the author does research on the New York City social groups and those trying to rise from their poor racial beginnings.  304 pages.

"Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

I'd heard a lot about this book over the years but had never picked it up before now.  I've always found economics boring or incomprehensible, and some of the topics covered here were both (such as cheating in sumo wrestling!).  Lots of statistics were reported to back up the findings and could be a bit mind-numbing but there were some results that really surprised me, especially about teaching and child rearing.  The most interesting part dealt with the unusual names that African-Americans have given their children over the last couple of decades, why they do it, and the consequences for doing so.  Levitt is an economist, and Dubner is a journalist.  320 pages; about 6 hours on CD.

Aftershock: The next economy and America's Future by Robert Reich

You've heard or read much of this theory before - how the recession was partly caused by the middle class running out of buying power, going too far into debt, and then having little resource when the tipping point of bad debts and too much leveraging hit. Reich puts his analysis into that context, and compares current conditions to past periods in America's history. He goes one step further to forecast more pending political upheaval as people become more outraged by their declining standard of living, but expresses hope we would be able to address the income disparities at the heart of the problem before that happens. This book was published in April, before the debt ceiling circus, but after the Republican takeover over of the House. Reich also proposes some interesting solutions to evening out the wealth disparity in the country, to get it back to where the economy can grow. A quick read, but definitely with a Democratic, populist viewpoint. 192 p.