Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner book cover
Freakonomics (2005) promises a fresh and enlightening take on the world that surrounds us courtesy of radical perceptions from the authors, Levitt and Dubner, who cast themselves as “rogue economists”. The book covers a range of topics, relevant mainly to the American middle classes, and jumps jarringly from one to another with no apparent attempt to provide a cohesive structure.

Although the style is often irritating, one could forgive this is if the observations made within the jumble of chapters were as ground-breaking as promised. Sadly, one is dragged through a series of banal musings, some of which are head-smackingly obvious, others of which are substantiated only by seemingly spurious evidence.

It would appear the popularity of Freakonomics is a result of clever marketing, both by the publishers and the authors themselves (within the book the reader is constantly told how complicated and incomprehensible the world is, before being ‘enlightened’ by the authors).

Devoid of revolutionary thinking, Freakonomics offers nothing to the discerning reader except an exploration into the triumph of style over substance in modern publishing.

Although Freakonomics is fairly easy to read the content is either mundane or presented using stupendously unscientific logic. A complete waste of my time and money, I was left very irritated by this book.


Useful Links
Reviews of Freakonomics on Amazon (UK) 
Film adaptation of Freakonomics on Amazon (UK)

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