Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's bestseller, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, is one of the more entertaining and worthwhile non-fiction, non-history books that I've ever had the pleasure of reading. While I rarely gush about books, this one is a real winner--provocative, well-written, interesting and in the end, it made me smarter for having read it. Gotta keep my brain plump for the zombies, you know.
Levitt and Dubner confess early on that their book has no unifying theme, save for the promise that it will ask questions of data sets that are typically left unasked. For example, they question whether or not high stakes testing will increase incidents of teachers cheating to improve scores and how mining test score data can help detect who cheats and who doesn't. It may not sound riveting, but reading it is as good as debating a whodunnit in Law and Order. Perhaps that's the genius of this book. It takes prurient questions--how much incentive does your real estate agent have to get you the very best price on your house?--and asks hard data to reveal the answers.
This is one of the best books I've read for awhile. I highly recommend it.
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