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The return of the704 »

In the vein of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point and Blink comes a fascinating exploration of various everyday subjects looked at and explained to us using the basic principles that an economist would normally use to analyze data. Levitt, a famous economist known for his controversial findings, pulls out a lot of "oh wow" moments in this book as he meanders through subjects as varied as the real estate business to the KKK. His most fasincating finding is his theory that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s resulted in the otherwise hard to explain drop in crime in the 1990s.

It's not easy to pull a concrete theme from this book, and Levitt doesn't even try to really tie the book together with one. If anything, the book shows you how to explain things by finding the incentives that drive everything.

Highly recommended as an audioboook for driving to work, by the way..

Posted at August 3, 2005 04:11 PM