Author: Maria Chzhen
Freakonomics was written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner in 2006, and published in 2009. It had received a lot of praise when it was first released. Some of the awards include: Book Sense Nonfiction Book of the Year, Quill Award for Business Book of the Year, Best Book of the Year by Economist, New York Magazine, Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com. Of course, it was also a New York Times bestseller. Multiple magazines wrote positive reviews for Freakonomics. The Wall Street Journal, which, in my opinion, is a very trustworthy source for economics and such, reported: "Genius... has you gasping in amazement." And the book deserved it! Most of the time that I was reading it, my head was exploding with eye-opening ideas and realization. The authors' conclusions hit me like: "Oh. I never thought about why this or that could be true. But now that I do, it makes perfect sense." So what are those eye-opening ideas?
The book has six chapters. Each of these chapters describes a newer topic, as an example: "Why do we cheat? Humankind is more honest than we think it is, why there are far fewer criminals now then there were in the 1980s, what impact the names have on our lives, etc.". Some of them are pretty controversial and daring. For example, chapter two talks about how the KuKluxKlan is similar to a group of real estate agents. And while it would be a pleasure for me to talk about how and why they are identical, it is worth finding out for yourselves. The answer is much, much more straightforward than you think. Once you find out what the similarity between them is, you will wonder: "How, how did I not think of this before? It is so simple!" I mean, I don't know about you, but that was my reaction to everything that is explained in Freakonomics.
The most surprising finding for me in the book is Chapter 4, where the book describes all the events that led up to crime rates dropping dramatically in the US in the 1990s. While most of us, even to this day, would think that it was the police and economics that lowered the rates of crimes, these factors didn't play such a massive part in crime rates dropping. Now, what did play the role was abortions. You saw that right; it was abortions that stopped the crimes. If the criminals aren't born, then there is no one there to commit the crime. Before the 1970s, it was illegal to abort fetuses. And because of that, these kids grew up neglected and impoverished. That is why they would turn to crime.
Freakonomics is a pretty awesome book. Even if you aren't into economics, Freakonomics is still an excellent book to consider reading because it explains these super-interesting ideas simply and in a way that anyone can understand them.
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