Super Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

From Goodreads:

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.

I love books that challenge my perceptions and make me think of things in a totally new way. Both Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics do that for me. And they do it in a way that is well written and entertaining and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny (the economic impact of a pimp is referred to as the "pimpact").

And as someone who generally finds economics deathly boring and too complex (with apologies to my economics professor father-in-law)(whom I've never taken a class from) the fact that I can really get into and understand these books is a testament to their awesomeness. The authors explain economic principles in a brief, concise way that is followed up by a really memorable example that helped me go, "Ah yes, I get that now." I kind of felt the way I did when reading Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything...like maybe I've just had the wrong professors and the stuff that made me want to throw myself out a window in college could actually be really interesting and worth delving into.

An excellent way to begin my 2010 reading.