A while back I read and thoroughly recommended a book called Freakonomics that presents a whole series of ideas about the analysis of interesting problems and data sets using approaches from economics. I really enjoyed thw wide-ranging ideas in the book and the journeys into topics I hadn’t given much thought to before. So I was looking forward to reading Super Freakonomics – a follow-up book by the same pair of authors.
SF started off quite well. There’s a really interesting and eye-opening chapter on the economics of prostitution. But I felt like I had read quite a lort of the book before, not least because there IS some duplication with Malclom Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” both in content and style. Towards the end, SF focuses in on actiosn that can be taken to counter-act climate change and here I felt that it rather looses the plot and becomes a bit of a rant about geoengineering and an advert for a few particular ideas. The critical analysis that characterised Freakonomics and the earlier parts of SF seems to get lost which is a pity.
Tim O'Hare 