| View Larger Image | SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance | Hardcoverby Steven D. Levitt (Author), Stephen J. Dubner (Author)
| List Price: | $29.99 | | Price: | $12.25 | | You Save: | $17.74 (59%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | William Morrow | | Edition: | First Edition, First Printingth Edition | | Page Count: | 288 Pages | | Publication Date: | November 01, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 16th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780060889579
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- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa? What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is—good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over—but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match. |
Amazon.com Review
Book Description The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary? SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa? Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands? How much good do car seats do? What's the best way to catch a terrorist? Did TV cause a rise in crime? What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor? Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match. From Superfreakonomics: Where do you stand on the freak-o-meter? Four years ago, you were cool. You read Freakonomics when it first came out. You impressed family and friends and dazzled dates with the insights you gleaned. Now Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, a freakquel even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Have you been keeping up? Can you call yourself a SuperFreak? Test your Superfreakonomics know-how now: Question 1: 5 points According to Superfreakonomics, what has been most helpful in improving the lives of women in rural India? A. The government ban on dowries and sex-selective abortions B. The spread of cable and satellite television C. Projects that pay women to not abort female babies D. Condoms made specially for the Indian market Question 2: 3 points Among Chicago street prostitutes, which night of the week is the most profitable? A. Saturday B. Monday C. Wednesday D. Friday Question 3: 5 points You land in an emergency room with a serious condition and your fate lies in the hands of the doctor you draw. Which characteristic doesn’t seem to matter in terms of doctor skill? A. Attended a top-ranked medical school and served a residency at a prestigious hospital B. Is female C. Gets high ratings from peers D. Spends more money on treatment Question 4: 3 points Which cancer is chemotherapy more likely to be effective for? A. Lung cancer B. Melanoma C. Leukemia D. Pancreatic cancer Question 5: 5 points Half of the decline in deaths from heart disease is mainly attributable to: A. Inexpensive drugs B. Angioplasty C. Grafts D. Stents Question 6: 3 points True or False: Child car seats do a better job of protecting children over the age of 2 from auto fatalities than regular seat belts. Question 7: 5 points What’s the best thing a person can do personally to cut greenhouse gas emissions? A. Drive a hybrid car B. Eat one less hamburger a week C. Buy all your food from local sources Question 8: 3 points Which is most effective at stopping the greenhouse effect? A. Public-awareness campaigns to discourage consumption B. Cap-and-trade agreements on carbon emissions C. Volcanic explosions D. Planting lots of trees Question 9: 5 points In the 19th century, one of the gravest threats of childbearing was puerperal fever, which was often fatal to mother and child. Its cause was finally determined to be: A. Tight bindings of petticoats early in the pregnancy B. Foul air in the delivery wards C. Doctors not taking sanitary precautions D. The mother rising too soon in the delivery room Question 10: 3 points Which of the following were not aftereffects of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001: A. The decrease in airline traffic slowed the spread of influenza. B. Thanks to extra police in Washington, D.C., crime fell in that city. C. The psychological effects of the attacks caused people to cut back on their consumption of alcohol, which led to a decrease in traffic accidents. D. The increase in border security was a boon to some California farmers, who, as Mexican and Canadian imports declined, sold so much marijuana that it became one of the states most valuable crops. Answers and Scoring Question 1 B, Cable and satellite TV. Women with television were less willing to tolerate wife beating, less likely to admit to having a “son preference,” and more likely to exercise personal autonomy. Plus, the men were perhaps too busy watching cricket. Question 2 A, Saturday nights are the most profitable. While Friday nights are the busiest, the single greatest determinant of a prostitute’s price is the specific trick she is hired to perform. And for whatever reason, Saturday customers purchase more expensive services. Question 3 C, One factor that doesn’t seem to matter is whether a doctor is highly rated by his or her colleagues. Those named as best by their colleagues turned out to be no better than average at lowering death rates--although they did spend less money on treatments. Question 4 C, Leukemia. Chemotherapy has proven effective on some cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, and testicular cancer, especially if these cancers are detected early. But in most cases, chemotherapy is remarkably ineffective, often showing zero discernible effect. That said, cancer drugs make up the second-largest category of pharmaceutical sales, with chemotherapy comprising the bulk. Question 5 A, Inexpensive drugs. Expensive medical procedures, while technologically dazzling, are responsible for a remarkably small share of the improvement in heart disease. Roughly half of the decline has come from reductions in risk factors like high cholesterol and high blood pressure, both of which are treated with relatively inexpensive drugs. And much of the remaining decline is thanks to ridiculously inexpensive treatments like aspirin, heparin, ACE inhibitors, and beta-blockers. Question 6 False. Based on extensive data analysis as well as crash tests paid for by the authors, old-fashioned seat belts do just as well as car seats. Question 7 B, Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more greenhouse-gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food, according to a recent study by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, two Carnegie Mellon researchers. Every time a Prius or other hybrid owner drives to the grocery store, she may be cancelling out its emissions-reducing benefit, at least if she shops in the meat section. Emission from cows, as well as sheep and other ruminants, are 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide released by cars and humans. Question 8 C, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines discharged more than 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which acted like a layer of sunscreen, reducing the amount of solar radiation and cooling off the earth by an average of one degree F. Question 9 C, doctors not taking sanitary precautions. This was the dawning age of the autopsy, and doctors did not yet know the importance of washing their hands after leaving the autopsy room and entering the delivery room. Question 10 C, the psychological effect of the attacks caused people to increase their alcohol consumption, and traffic accidents increased as a result. Scoring 32-40: Certified SuperFreak 25-31: Freak--surprises lay in wait for you 16-24: Wannabe freak--you’ve got some reading to do 1-15: Conventional wisdomer--you’re still thinking in old ways |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 110 reviews)
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A Sequel by Maxim Masiutin (Chisinau, Republic of Moldova)  4 Stars
November 28, 2009
The book is a sequel to "Freakonomics". The new book is better: the central theme is solid and easy to distinguish, and the stories are remarkable to a greater extent. The approach of both of the books is to apply economic analysis to different situations to provide an objective view of the self-interests of self-interested parties. You will see how the laws of unintended consequences affect our lives.
Besides that, the book have answered some questions to which I couln't find the answer, for example why women earn less or why all the people are not regularly screened for cancer to cure the decease on early stages while it is curable. I even wanted to give this book five stars, since I rarely give this mark, and only to exceptional books. What have puzzled me is the final chapter about climate change.
After reading the first book, readers felt they understood the world a little better, but in this second book, the final chapter tackles the climate-change debate, where the authors misquoted the scientists they consulted. This chapter is problematic, not only because the authors have made a significant departure from their methodology (the chapter contains little in the way of economics) but also because the casual reader is left pondering why the suggestions of this chapter have not already been deployed. The authors have made a disclaimer early in the book that they are not offering cures but merely invite for a discussion, but what is troublesome is not just that the idea, like other geoengineering schemes, is untested on any appreciable scale, but the implicit assertion that the authors have cracked the hidden economic forces at work in the climate-change debate, and the explicit suggestion that this one technological solution is the silver bullet that could solve the climate calamity. To give the sequel's readers this distorted lens through which to view climate change and its solution is to do readers a grave disservice.
Anyway, the book is worth reading I highly recommend it. You can even read it if you didn't read the first book, since "SuperFreakonomics" is better. I can also recommend "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff and Irving Geis.
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Freakonomics by Russell P. Clarvoe (Oneonta,NY) 4 Stars
November 27, 2009
If you liked the first one, you'll like the second one. It's not fabulous literature but it is an entertaining look at the world through the lens of economics.
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Levitt and Dubner - This took four years to write??? I don't believe it. by Warren R. Grayson (Birmingham, AL United States)  2 Stars
November 27, 2009
Let me begin by saying that there seems to be a hidden agenda afoot in Freakonomics that isn't explicitly stated until one reads Superfreakonomics. It wasn't until I read Superfreakonomics that I understood what Freakonomics was about. The agenda is the defense of Homo Economicus. If you are unfamiliar with the debate between Homo Economicus and Homo Sociologicus it boils down to this: Homo Economicus is the figuratively self-interested and completely rational man that makes perfectly rational decisions in the marketplace because he places his own self-interest above all other interests (This concept may be familiar to you if you have seen the movie A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe playing the lead character John Nash. As you may recall, John Nash shared a Nobel Prize for this idea in economics, which came to be known as Homo Economicus). Homo Sociologicus on the other hand, is the figuratively selfless and often-times altruistic man that makes less than rational decisions in the marketplace because he places the interests of others over his own, or is swayed in his decision making by something other than pure logic. Homo Economicus = Rational, while Homo Sociologicus = Irrational. Chapter 3 in Superfreakonomics is devoted solely to the defense of Homo Economicus, but the defense is limited to only one man (John List) and only one experiment. Levitt and Dubner's 'persuasive' evidence is rather lacking in this respect.
Another way to view this distinction between Homo Economicus and Homo Sociologicus is in regards to the philosophical debate of Free Will. In this view, Homo Economicus has complete and total free will while Homo Sociologicus does not. In essence: do people always have free will when it comes to making decisions in the marketplace? I don't really come down on either side of this debate because Free Will depends a great deal on circumstances and context; however, where Levitt and Dubner (along with the rest of the free market, laissez-faire true-believers and CNBC Supercapitalist's (Kudlow)) come down, is in defense of Homo Economicus. This is the Standard Economic Model.
Now, that being said, Levitt and Dubner have a refrain throughout both Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics that reads: "People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable or manifest. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences. This applies to schoolteachers and Realtors and crack dealers as well as expectant mothers, sumo wrestlers, bagel salesmen, and the Ku Klux Klan." They frequently employ this paradigm to explain why government regulations and government interventions always lead to 'bad' unintended consequences. In sum, Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics are standard defenses of free market captialism.
About the books: I, like many reviewers, think that Levitt and Dubner have over done it on the "Gee-Whiz" factor. They remind me of TV anchor's that lead in with a bizarre, illogical sounding, or supposedly "shocking" kind of one-liner, that when explained fully is far less amusing than originally proposed. It happens in every, yes every, chapter - in both books. And yes, they frequently confuse Causation with Correlation. Furthermore, the haughty, I-Know-Something-You-Don't-Know attitude that Levitt and Dubner present, pervades everything. They like to think that economist's are the only true logicians in the world and everyone else is practicing some-kind of folk-psychology, which invariably makes us all bumpkins. Here is an example: "Although economists are trained to be cold-blooded enough to sit around and calmly discuss the trade-offs involved in global catastrophe, the rest of us are a bit more excitable." I get the feeling that I am sitting on a rug in Kindergarten and if I behave properly I will get a gold-star. It's tiresome.
Lastly, I give it two stars simply because it is not terrible. It entertained me to some degree at least. If you like the standard defense of Homo Economicus then you can't go wrong reading Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics 3rd Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, Tim Hartford's The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World or Guy Sorman's Economics Does Not Lie: A Defense of the Free Market in a Time of Crisis. If this does not suit you, then I strongly recommend reading about Homo Sociologicus. Starting with Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Michael Shermer's The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Lives or Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials).
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Drunk Walking? by Sandi Shores (Quebec, Canada) 2 Stars
November 26, 2009
The only thing that really bothers me about this book and it's theory on drunk driving vs drunk walking is that drunk walkers don't usually kill innocent victims that they bump into, but how many innocent people have been killed by a drunk driver who walks away from the crash?
I think it's very disingenuous to compare drunk walking to drunk driving and say that drunk driving is safer, maybe for the drunk but not for the victims they kill with their vehicles.
How many drunks drivers are going to justify getting behind the wheel after having it proven that it's safer for them to drive than walk?
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SuperFreakonomics Review by booklover  5 Stars
November 25, 2009
Incentivism is an administrative principle and problem-solving method which derives in part from cybernetics, the science of governing systems. Applied to management and to government at all levels, Incentivism is the proposition that more can be accomplished for much less cost if incentives are used to align interests and steer policies and actions, in place of many or most more direct means of regulating, governing and directing.
SuperFreakonomics is a follow-up book to Freakonomics (same authors). It provides an incentive-based approach to understanding economics. If you liked Freakonomics, you should like SuperFreakonomics: it's more of the same. It is not necessary to read Freakonomics before reading this book.
The authors say that they intend this book to start a conversation, not necessarily to present conclusive findings. In that, they are successful. The book offers fascinating, entirely readable examples of situations which seem counter-intuitive, but which illustrate the value of understanding what people really want, as a way to determine how and why they act the way they do.
I believe that a lot of their examples are forced. Despite copious endnotes and documentation, many of their assertions are, frankly, not credible. For example, I can't believe there is reliable evidence about exactly how many billions of miles are driven drunk by people who don't get caught. If they didn't get caught, the statistic is based on guesswork and extrapolation, and when you get to billions of miles, guesswork and extrapolation can lead you very far off, indeed. The final chapter of the book is the most controversial, and the authors have been accused of misquoting an authority to make their point. Without admitting that they have done so, they have agreed to modify the chapter in future editions.
Despite the possible inaccuracies, I recommend the book. It is an easy introduction to economics and psychology, eminently readable, will get the reader thinking about a great many useful topics, and can be the basis for delightful discussion.
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