I enjoyed Freakonomics, as well as the follow-up Superfreakonomics. I don't think its conclusions should be taken as conclusive, but how they look at different factors is interesting. Many of the accusations against Levitt & Dubner were thrown at Malcolm Gladwell (who wrote an endorsement for Freakonomics) for his works Blink, Tipping Point, and Outliers. I found all of these books very interesting, but didn't walk away from them thinking I had an iron-clad understanding of the subjects.

One of Gladwell's more interesting theories was that Asians are good at math because the subject is largely dependent on persistence, and the agricultural history of the culture toiling in rice fields instilled this trait in them more than others. At the conclusion of this section, Gladwell overtly stated that this was just his theory, but no one has yet to come up with a better one.

His theory on why the Irish fight so much is really interesting too.

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Originally posted by mezzir Also no fucking way was it the best work of non-fiction ever.

I think the accusation was the opposite.

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Originally posted by WittyHandle I enjoyed Freakonomics, as well as the follow-up Superfreakonomics. I don't think its conclusions should be taken as conclusive, but how they look at different factors is interesting. Many of the accusations against Levitt & Dubner were thrown at Malcolm Gladwell (who wrote an endorsement for Freakonomics) for his works Blink, Tipping Point, and Outliers. I found all of these books very interesting, but didn't walk away from them thinking I had an iron-clad understanding of the subjects. One of Gladwell's more interesting theories was that Asians are good at math because the subject is largely dependent on persistence, and the agricultural history of the culture toiling in rice fields instilled this trait in them more than others. At the conclusion of this section, Gladwell overtly stated that this was just his theory, but no one has yet to come up with a better one. His theory on why the Irish fight so much is really interesting too.

I read "Outliers"... looking forward to the other two. Which was your favorite? Most people I ask that have read Gladwell's books seem to like Blink the best.

Extensive analysis of why Levitt's "more abortion leads to lower crime" theory is bogus:

http://www.isteve.com/abortion.htm

Poppy social science stuff is admittedly fun to read and think about, but a lot of it is ultimately unsupportable junk. People tend to be so much in awe of the counterintuitive or striking appearance of a thesis, or the eloquence and clarity with which an author presents it, that they can forget to look at the evidence more carefully.

I don't doubt that a fair amount of it is incorrect. I think that it is very absorbing the way they look at things, and that can be a siren song away from the facts at times. I look forward to reading your link later tonight when I get home. I'm not out to defend or attack any of these authors, I just find their work to be very interesting.

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Originally posted by The17sss I read "Outliers"... looking forward to the other two. Which was your favorite? Most people I ask that have read Gladwell's books seem to like Blink the best.

Blink is his most popular book by far, and probably my fav too, but Tipping Point is also a great read, and the one that initially catapulted him to the spotlight.