Freakonomics

Mr. Levitt’s (freak)conomics is not all math and numbers (which he admits he is bad at anyway). It has a tragic-comic human side to it which lends it levity. As a result, the reader, even if he’s mathematically challenged, willingly goes along with the data to find answers to many questions that he’s always wondered about..

The book brings closure to many known but unproven thoughts that all of us have, or have had about a wide array of topics. Right from the get-go the reader is hooked; rather unusual for a non-fiction. But then this is no ordinary work of non-fiction; it is freaky in that it is a number cruncher, a data spewer, but it tickles, and just doesn’t let the reader go.. The topics chosen for scrutiny are to be blamed for that; ‘Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Mothers?’, 'What do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers have in Common?'! How outlandish are those, and yet Mr. Levitt expounds extensively on the same, and the chuckling reader can’t wait to know the data based conclusion of that analysis!

Mr. Dubner, a journalist with The New York Times and the co-author of the book, holds the perfect pen to put Mr. Levitt’s thoughts on paper. His writing is simple and lucid and compliments Mr. Levitt’s easy to understand Economics. After much coercing, when a high schooler finally began reading this book, he didn’t budge till he had turned that last page! Now if we had more such Levitt and Dubner works “NO child (would indeed be) left behind.”

Freakonomics would surely freak you out by its readability.