Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Having read both of Malcolm Gladwell's excellent books in the past 15 months or so, I have developed quite a taste for this sort of "change the way you think about things" writing. So when my friend Nick suggested Freakonomics to me, I gladly took him up on it.

Steven Levitt is an economist-- but don't write him off as a stiff suit just yet. Levitt's approach to economics (and really, to life) is anything but dull and conventional. He emerged early in his career as a free-thinking type, and his work has earned him impressive acclaim.

Levitt teamed up with Stephen Dubner, a New York Times and New Yorker writer, to put some of his (Levitt's) ideas into a format that would be accessible to those outside the small world of economics. Be glad they did.

If Gladwell's books focus on new ways to think about ideas, people, and relationships, Freakonomics focuses on new ways to think about data. Statistics, surveys, interviews, financial reports-- they all contain stories and meta-messages that are far more powerful than the raw data alone. Perhaps the glaring shortcoming of analysts has been their inability to discover those meta-messages (though we didn't know that before Freakonomics).

This is the brilliance of Stephen Levitt: he is able to derive the stories from the numbers. And this is the appeal and fascination of Freaknomics: Levitt and Dubner unfold the stories for us.

The book cuts a wide swath, cheating, the advantage of being an "expert", the economics of drug-dealers, the effect of legalized abortion on crime, real estate, standardized testing, and parenting. In each case, the writers draw connections between sets of data that most would consider unrelated, and in so doing demonstrate the meta-messages they profess.

Perhaps the most intriguing example is their discussion about how legalized abortion effected crime rate. Levitt and Dubner examine the projected crime rates of the early-to-mid nineties, which were thought to be frighteningly high. Those projections were never realized-- in fact, they crime rate actually dropped instead of climbing. In answer to the difficult question of "why?" Levitt and Dubner assert that the legalization of abortion in the early 70s was the primary contributor. This, they say, is not a good thing: it exposes abortion as a racial and socio-economic weapon, since many or most of those likely to abort children are also highly likely to produce criminally-inclined children. While Levitt and Dubner approach the issue from a purely statistical and economic standpoint-- which will be for some a difficult separation of rational/emotional-- their discussion is an intriguing one.

Since I've already drawn the connection between Gladwell's books and Freakonomics, I'll take the comparison one step further. I have to say that I was mildly disappointed with the latter-- I was hoping for another round, a third Gladwell book of sorts. As good as it is, Freakonomics isn't that.

There are two differences that lead to this conclusion: first, Gladwell's books are more instructive; it's almost as if he's teaching you to think as he does. Freakonomics is highly informational and highly demonstrative, but it is not instructive.

Second, Dubner is a fine writer-- no one from the Times and the New Yorker could be say to be second-rate. But Gladwell is a cut above the rest in this way: his writing is simply superb. Dubner is good, but not as good as Gladwell.

My final assessment? Freakonomics is a great read-- a definite "buy". (Read it before you pick up Gladwell and you'll be even more satisfied.)