I read Freakonomics. I bought it at the Harvard Coop and it has been much lauded so I expected it to be incredible. It wasn’t. I guess some context is in order though. I normally read mostly non-fiction, heavily footnoted, Ward Churchill-type history or dense, abstract situationist-type stuff. Tends to be slow and grinding sometimes, but the arguments, logic and references are very tight. I’m not a fast reader like my mom or girlfriend, so I plod through these books. Freakonomics I flew through. Half the book is spent condeming “conventional wisdom” as being self serving and based on shoddy causational correlations, and the other half is spent proposing self-serving causational arguments. Like attributing the dramatic crime-rate-decline in the 90’s to Roe v. Wade. Lots of interesting anctedotes and ideas, seemed poppy and sloppy tho.

I’m now reading “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. I found this book through Gladwell’s endorsement of Freakonomics, but so far it seems much better. Different topically and almost as quick and easy of a read, but much smarter.