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 econo-mist 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 conventional wisdom on its head.

Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a mountain of data and a simple question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and 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 workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Klu Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Gladwell, Malcolm

Deterministic
Speaking of statistics, one third of the book is made up of what the authors term "bonus material", which comes down to an article on Levitt, columns written by either Levitt or Dubner, and blog entries. All of which add nothing to the already skeptical "hidden side of everything". Of the 188 pages that make up the formal writing of the book, almost one third of the text relates to (directly or indirectly) the notion that legalized abortion, Roe v. Wade (1973) was the real driving force behind crime fall in New York and the rest of the US. In other words, had those baby's been born they would have eventually become criminals. Whether you agree with this notion or not has really little to do with the fact that Levitt cleverly takes the reader by the hand and convinces rather than proves that his subjective interpretations, of nonetheless real data, are the ultimate cause behind crime drop. In essence the reader is tricked into thinking this trend of thought is actually fact based and above all logical in its process. One can endlessly debate over this hypothesis, but at one point or another, determinism will come into mind. Try to recall Tom Cruise in his crime "avoiding" investigator role in the blockbuster movie Minority Report. Although he was preconceived to become an assassin, he willingly chose not to kill. The rest of the stories (if I recall correctly are no more than 6, far from "everything" as the title so boldly states) are somewhat interesting from an entertaining perspective but fall exceedingly short to those of Malcolm Gladwell. Levitt's greatest flaw is to regard himself (in an attempt to draw attention to himself more than to humbly accept his weaknesses) an incompetent in most areas of economics and everyday life in general but considers himself a revolutionary of conventional wisdom, bold and courageous, and unafraid to explore that which has been considered fact. As the closing remark in his book states, a colleague of Levitt encountered Economics Nobel Prize Winner Thomas Schelling and urged him to consider Levitt as one of his students... Schelling was unmoved.