| SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance | 
| Authors: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Publisher: William Morrow
List Price: $29.99
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Rating:  233 reviews
Format: Deckle Edge
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 0060889578
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN: 9780060889579
Publication Date: November 1, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780060889579 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Book Description
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. From Superfreakonomics: Where do you stand on the freak-o-meter?
 Four years ago, you were cool. You read Freakonomics when it first came out. You impressed family and friends and dazzled dates with the insights you gleaned. Now Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, a freakquel even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first.
Have you been keeping up? Can you call yourself a SuperFreak? Test your Superfreakonomics know-how now: Question 1: 5 points
According to Superfreakonomics, what has been most helpful in improving the lives of women in rural India?
A. The government ban on dowries and sex-selective abortions
B. The spread of cable and satellite television
C. Projects that pay women to not abort female babies
D. Condoms made specially for the Indian market Question 2: 3 points
Among Chicago street prostitutes, which night of the week is the most profitable?
A. Saturday
B. Monday
C. Wednesday
D. Friday Question 3: 5 points
You land in an emergency room with a serious condition and your fate lies in the hands of the doctor you draw. Which characteristic doesnât seem to matter in terms of doctor skill?
A. Attended a top-ranked medical school and served a residency at a prestigious hospital
B. Is female
C. Gets high ratings from peers
D. Spends more money on treatment Question 4: 3 points
Which cancer is chemotherapy more likely to be effective for?
A. Lung cancer
B. Melanoma
C. Leukemia
D. Pancreatic cancer Question 5: 5 points
Half of the decline in deaths from heart disease is mainly attributable to:
A. Inexpensive drugs
B. Angioplasty
C. Grafts
D. Stents Question 6: 3 points
True or False: Child car seats do a better job of protecting children over the age of 2 from auto fatalities than regular seat belts. Question 7: 5 points
Whatâs the best thing a person can do personally to cut greenhouse gas emissions?
A. Drive a hybrid car
B. Eat one less hamburger a week
C. Buy all your food from local sources Question 8: 3 points
Which is most effective at stopping the greenhouse effect?
A. Public-awareness campaigns to discourage consumption
B. Cap-and-trade agreements on carbon emissions
C. Volcanic explosions
D. Planting lots of trees Question 9: 5 points
In the 19th century, one of the gravest threats of childbearing was puerperal fever, which was often fatal to mother and child. Its cause was finally determined to be:
A. Tight bindings of petticoats early in the pregnancy
B. Foul air in the delivery wards
C. Doctors not taking sanitary precautions
D. The mother rising too soon in the delivery room Question 10: 3 points
Which of the following were not aftereffects of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001:
A. The decrease in airline traffic slowed the spread of influenza.
B. Thanks to extra police in Washington, D.C., crime fell in that city.
C. The psychological effects of the attacks caused people to cut back on their consumption of alcohol, which led to a decrease in traffic accidents.
D. The increase in border security was a boon to some California farmers, who, as Mexican and Canadian imports declined, sold so much marijuana that it became one of the states most valuable crops. Answers and Scoring
Question 1
B, Cable and satellite TV. Women with television were less willing to tolerate wife beating, less likely to admit to having a âson preference,â and more likely to exercise personal autonomy. Plus, the men were perhaps too busy watching cricket. Question 2
A, Saturday nights are the most profitable. While Friday nights are the busiest, the single greatest determinant of a prostituteâs price is the specific trick she is hired to perform. And for whatever reason, Saturday customers purchase more expensive services. Question 3
C, One factor that doesnât seem to matter is whether a doctor is highly rated by his or her colleagues. Those named as best by their colleagues turned out to be no better than average at lowering death rates--although they did spend less money on treatments. Question 4
C, Leukemia. Chemotherapy has proven effective on some cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkinâs disease, and testicular cancer, especially if these cancers are detected early. But in most cases, chemotherapy is remarkably ineffective, often showing zero discernible effect. That said, cancer drugs make up the second-largest category of pharmaceutical sales, with chemotherapy comprising the bulk. Question 5
A, Inexpensive drugs. Expensive medical procedures, while technologically dazzling, are responsible for a remarkably small share of the improvement in heart disease. Roughly half of the decline has come from reductions in risk factors like high cholesterol and high blood pressure, both of which are treated with relatively inexpensive drugs. And much of the remaining decline is thanks to ridiculously inexpensive treatments like aspirin, heparin, ACE inhibitors, and beta-blockers. Question 6
False. Based on extensive data analysis as well as crash tests paid for by the authors, old-fashioned seat belts do just as well as car seats. Question 7
B, Shifting less than one day per weekâs worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more greenhouse-gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food, according to a recent study by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, two Carnegie Mellon researchers. Every time a Prius or other hybrid owner drives to the grocery store, she may be cancelling out its emissions-reducing benefit, at least if she shops in the meat section. Emission from cows, as well as sheep and other ruminants, are 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide released by cars and humans. Question 8
C, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines discharged more than 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which acted like a layer of sunscreen, reducing the amount of solar radiation and cooling off the earth by an average of one degree F. Question 9
C, doctors not taking sanitary precautions. This was the dawning age of the autopsy, and doctors did not yet know the importance of washing their hands after leaving the autopsy room and entering the delivery room. Question 10
C, the psychological effect of the attacks caused people to increase their alcohol consumption, and traffic accidents increased as a result. Scoring
32-40: Certified SuperFreak
25-31: Freak--surprises lay in wait for you
16-24: Wannabe freak--youâve got some reading to do
1-15: Conventional wisdomer--youâre still thinking in old ways
Product Description
The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. 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. 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?
- What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?
- Can eating kangaroo save the planet?
Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really isâgood, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times overâbut only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 233
 The idea is to make you THINK! January 5, 2010
Rick Wingender (Knoxville, TN)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
I had to laugh as I read some of the negative reviews. Listen people, it's not intended to be a TEXTBOOK, nor is it written like one, thankfully. I've read both books. Super Freakonomics is a good exercise in critical thinking (something that is becoming sorely lacking in the age of American Idol, thanks to our putrid public schools and Playstation parenting); it makes you think about a lot of "truths" that we take for granted. For example, this book actually made me change some of my thinking about global warming. The book is super-interesting, and full of information that you'd be hard-pressed to find in your typical daily reading; and, it "sexes-up" the fields of microeconomics and behavioral economics. One of the points (relentlessly made) is how we (especially our governments) seem to prefer complex, costly solutions to problems, when cheaper, simpler solutions often exist, and the book does a great job of providing many examples of this. Is it a definitive tome on the many topics it covers? No - again, it's not a textbook, but it was definitely worth the time I spent reading it - I hated putting it down.
An entertaining read January 5, 2010
J. Carbone (Boston)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed reading this book. It was a quick and interesting read. I enjoyed the diverse topics, walking drunk, global warming/cooling, externalities, etc.
Reading the negative comments I admit I don't find them baseless. However, I don't take the book as the concrete authority on all things. I feel the books main purpose is to open the mind and allow a different perspective to swirl around for a while; which it does.
There were many passages that actually got me shaking my head in wonderment. February 12, 2010
Blaine Greenfield (Belle Meade, NJ)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you liked FREAKONOMICS by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner,
you'll love this follow-up . . . it's similar in format, in that there are again a bunch
of stories that show the impact of incentives on our lives
But as the catchy subtitle implies, there's a lot of new stuff here, too:
GLOBAL COOLING, PATRIOTIC PROSTITUTES AND WHY SUICIDE BOMBERS
SHOULD BUY LIFE INSURANCE . . . the chapter headings and the descriptions
that follow also have you wanting to find out the answers to such provocative
questions as:
What really accounts for the male-female wage gap? How can you tell a good doctor
from a bad doctor? How much good do car seats do? And a whole lot more.
There were many passages that actually got me shaking my head in
wonderment; among them:
* The U. S. charity Smile Train, which performs cleft-repair surgery on poor children
around the world, recently spent some time in Chennai, India. When one local man
was asked how many children he had, he answered "one." The organization later learned
that the man did have a son--but he also had five daughters, who apparently didn't
warrant a mention. Smile Train also learned that midwives in Chennai were sometimes
paid $2.50 to smother a baby girl born with a cleft deformity--and so, putting the lure
of incentives to good use, the charity began offering midwives as much as $10 for each
baby girl they took to a hospital for cleft surgery.
* But Title IX also brought some bad news for women. When the law was passed, more
that 90 percent of college women's sports teams had female head coaches. Title IX boosted
the appeal of such jobs: salaries rose and there was more exposure and excitement. Like
the lowly pleasant food that is "discovered" by the culinary elite and promptly migrates
from roadside shacks into high-end restaurants, these jobs were soon snapped up
by a new set of customers: men. These days, barely 40 percent of college women's
sports teams are coached by women. Among the most visible coaching jobs in women's
sports are those in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), founded thirteen
years ago as a corollary to the men's NBA. As of this writing, the WNBA has 13 teams and
just 6 of them-again, fewer than 50 percent- are coached by women. This is actually an
improvement from the league's tenth anniversary season, when only 3 of the 14 coaches
were women.
And then there was this tidbit that also got me rethinking some conventional
wisdom about something that seemingly sounded like such a good thing:
* Consider the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was intended to safeguard
disabled workers from discrimination. A noble intention, yes? Absolutely--but the data
convincingly shows that the net result was fewer jobs for Americans with disabilities. Why?
After the ADA became law, employers were so worried they wouldn't be able to discipline
or fire bad workers who had a disability that they avoided hiring such workers in the
first place.
I also liked the thorough documentation (some 36 pages) and, also, that the authors
didn't include this at the bottom of each footnoted page . . . rather, they put it at the
end of the book as "Notes," which is something that I wish others.
My only disappointment was in the last chapter on global warning . . . Levitt and
Dubner took potshots at Al Gore, which of course is their right to do so . . . however,
they then spent much time promoting the ideas of scientist/entrepreneur Nathan
Myrhrvhold and his crew . . . the reality is that while Myrhvhold might be onto
something, nothing yet has been proven to work.
Economics can be Fun January 25, 2010
Andrew Desmond (Neutral Bay, NSW Australia)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It sheds light on why I bothered studying for a degree in economics at university. Yes, economics can be fun. It's a pity it gets such a bum rap. Why should it be called the "dismal science"?
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have written an amusing and readable book. It's full of anecdotes and whimsical stories without ever seriously veering from the science of microeconomics which is its basis. The two Steves have researched an array of topics from street prostitution, to hospital deaths in the 19the century before opining upon global warming and how it might be resolved if, indeed, it is a problem. It's this final point that I particularly loved. Global warming has become a modern religion. It has its own dogmas and turns a blind eye to anyone who questions the "rules". I am quite confident that, in due course, global warming will be solved but it won't be by the naïve and cack handed solutions that greens put forward. It will be economics that comes to the rescue. This has always been the history of the world and I see no reason why this should change now.
Perhaps the most pleasant feature of "SuperFreakonomics" (and its predecessor "Freakonomics") is that it brings economics away from the realm of stuffy ivory towered professors and their arcane theories and formulas. Instead, economics is presented as something to enjoy. This is the book's real strength. I can only hope that this technique has introduced economics to a wider audience.
However, before finishing up, I find myself wondering which of the "case studies" amused me the most. I think it was the story about travel in New York City and how horses caused more deaths per capita than cars. It's ironic then that the car is seen as the work of the devil by some when, in fact, it has been a great liberator of the human race. Yes, "SuperFreakonomics" is a great read. Read it and enjoy.
Similar to the first December 20, 2009
therosen (New York, NY United States)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is similar to Freakonomics - investigations into how economists use incentives and statistics to tease out counter-intuitive real world facts. They tackle fields not usually considered the domain of economists (pimps, global warming, drunk driving...) in their persuit of the counter-intuitive.
If you liked Freakonomics, you should like Superfreakonomics too. If you didn't, you won't like this for the same reason. Perhaps the one downside is this book isn't as innovative as the original. The first paved new ground in pop-Economics. This just took the same roads a few more miles.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 233
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