US users

Undoubtedly one of the business publishing sensations of the last couple of years, Freakonomics arrives in paperback in the UK next week, boasting a new cover which truly does justice to its highly unorthodox spin on the economics of everyday culture. From the outside, it looks more like an Elmore Leonard crime thriller than a business book, and deservedly so. Rather than tackle the dry plains of high finance, renegade economist Steven Levitt and co-author Dubner show how the simplest economic principles drive every aspect of life in modern America, from the inner workings of a crack gang or the Ku Klux Klan to basic truths about educational success and failure. The result is one of the most provocative and thought-provoking, as well as entertaining, business books around.

Backed up with a wealth of statistics, Levitt and Dubner offer a new set of connections between even the most mundane of statistics. What is the real reason for America's falling crime rates? Which is more hazardous to children, the country's 200 million guns or its 6 million swimming pools? Why are schoolteachers like sumo wrestlers? What do crack cocaine and nylon stockings have in common? Why do names matter, and who will do better in life out of two brothers named Winner and Loser? Much of the book's thinking is driven by a combination of America's potent racial mix with its driving culture of success. But at its core, Levitt and Dubner demonstrate that everyday economics is really just a study of human behaviour - how people set about getting what they want or need, especially when other people want the same thing. The same rules apply in every stratum of society from wealthy pillars of society all the way down to urban hustlers. 

Added 30th March 2006