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Super Freakonomics
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Read Super Freakonomics
Freakonomics: Book 2

Super Freakonomics (2009) (edit title/settings)

Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

by Steven D. Levitt (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Steven D. Levitt is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and the recipient of the John Bates Clark medal, awarded to the most influential economist under the age of forty.

Summary edit see section history

"The Freakquel is here. In their new international bestseller, Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner look deeper, question harder and uncover even more hidden truths about our world, from terrorism to shark attacks, cable TV to hurricanes. They ask, among other things:
~... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

"The Freakquel is here. In their new international bestseller, Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner look deeper, question harder and uncover even more hidden truths about our world, from terrorism to shark attacks, cable TV to hurricanes. They ask, among other things:
~ What's a sure-fire way to catch a terrorist?
~ Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?
~ Which cancer does chemotherapy work best for?
~ Why is saving the plant easier than we think?
Sometimes, the most superfreaky solution is the simplest." synopsis from book cover.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “In the end, Feied won - or, really, the data won. Axyxxi went live on a single desktop computer in the WHC emergency room. Feied put a sign on it: "Beta Test: Do Not Use." (No one ever said he wasn't clever.) Like so many Adams and Eves, doctors and nurses began to peck at the forbidden fruit and found it nothing short of miraculous”
  • “But a surprising fact is that the accidental death rate for soldiers in the early 1980s was higher than the death rate by hostile fire for every year the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. It seems that practicing to fight a war can be just about as dangerous as really fighting one.And, to further put things in perspective, think about this: since 1982, some 42,000 active U.S. military personnel have been killed - roughly the same number of Americans who die in traffic accidents in a single year.”
  • “So while the true believers bemoan the desecration of our earthly Eden, the heretics point out that this Eden, long before humans arrived, once became so naturally thick with methane smog that it was rendered nearly lifeless. When Al Gore urges the citizenry to sacrifice their plastic shopping bags, their air-conditioning, their extraneous travel, the agnostics grumble that human activity accounts for just 2 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions, with the remainder generated by natural processes like plant decay."”
  • “In the late 1940s, three General Electric scientists in Schenectady, New York, successfully seeded clouds with silver iodide. The trio included a chemist named Bernard Vonnegut; the project's public-relations man was his younger brother Kurt, who went on to become a world-class novelist - and in his writing, he used a good bit of the far-out science he picked up in Schenectady."”
  • “So Budyko's Blanket could effectively reverse global warming at a total cost of $250 million. Compared with that $1.2 trillion that Nicholas Stern proposes spending each year to attack the problem, IV's idea is, well, practically free. It would cost $50 million less to stop global warming than what Al Gore's foundation is paying just to increase public awareness about global warming”
  • “It is a fact of life that people love to complain, particularly abouthow terrible the modern world is compared with the past. They are nearly always wrong. On just about any dimension you can think of - welfare, crime, income, education, transportation, worker safety, health - the twenty-first century is far more hospitable to the average human than any earlier time”

First Sentence edit see section history

One afternoon not long ago, on a welcoming cool day toward the end of summer, a twenty-nine-year-old woman named LaSheena sat on the hood of an SUV outside Dearborn Homes, a housing project on the South Side of Chicago.

Table of Contents edit see section history

An Explanatory Note
Introduction: Putting the Freak in Economics
Chapter 1 How is a Street Prostitue Like a Department-Store Santa?
Chapter 2 Why Should Suicide Bombers Buy Life Insurance?
Chapter 3 Unbelievable Stories About Apathy and Altruism
Chapter 4 The Fix is in--and It's Cheap and Simple
Chapter 5 What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo Have in Common?
Epilogue

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 2 of 2 in Freakonomics. (standard series)

Preceded by Freakonomics.

This book is in Population Economics. (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Steven D. Levitt (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Stephen J. Dubner (Author)
  2. Mieke Tulp (Translator)
  3. Pon Ruiter (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: William Morrow
Country: United States
Publication Date: October 20, 2009
ISBN: 978-0060889579
Page Count: 288

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: HB 74 .P8 L4797 2009
  • Dewey: 330

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Freakonomics

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