SuperFreakonomics Book Review

For this month's book, I wanted to write about the follow up to the first book I wrote about, “Freakonomics”, called “Superfreakonomics”. It is obviously written by the same authors as “Freakonomics”, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It should also come as no surprise that it is very similar to the first book just with different subject matter. As before, the authors delve into very interesting societal questions, such as, “How is a street prostitute like a department store santa?” and “Can eating kangaroo meat save the planet?” and analyze the economic incentive and behavior behind these issues. One of the many things I love about this book, as with the first one, is that these questions they are asking seem to not make any sense and are not things we would question on our own but once they are explained, it all comes together. I also think it’s really interesting that these books look at behavioral economics or, in other words, economics with a mix of physcology.

I really enjoy this aspect because we all know that economics isn’t always the most exciting especially when you’re just looking at a bunch of numbers and graphs but when you take into account the psychology behind why people make the choices they make, it makes it so much more fascinating. As much as I enjoyed this book I have to admit I liked the first one more only because I feel the first one had more shock value which made it a fun read. Nonetheless, I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading this book and I highly recommend it especially if you are looking for something more interesting that just analyzing data and statistics.