Freakonomics

I just finished reading Freakonomics and I want to highly recommend it as a very interesting book. I may be a little late to the game, for it just became the second-longest book to ever be on the New York Times Bestsellers list without ever making it to number one, at 92 weeks. Number one? The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama. But no matter.

Freakonomics is a rather loose collection of six chapters that all deal with very interesting and unconventional questions, such as How is the Ku Klux Klan like a group of real estate agents? Well, read the book and find out. One of the chapters, Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?, is actually very nicely summarized by Steven Levitt himself, at another great installment of the TEDTalks, which I cannot recommend enough. Check out this video to get a good feel for what Freakonomics is all about:



To get an even better idea of what you might find in the book (really an extended discussion of the topics in the book), you can also check out the Freakonomics Blog, which is a treasure trove of randomness. Through it, you will come across some real jewels...



...and some rather odd stuff, such as this parody from the Columbia Business School:



Good stuff. Some of it profound, some of it trivial, but almost all of it highly interesting.

One more thing. . .
Will it blend? Don't ask. . .