Superfreakonomics

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. The ask, among other things:

• What's a sure fire way to catch a terorist?
• Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?
• Which cancer does chemotherapy work best for?
• Why is saving the planet easier than we think?

Sometimes the most superfreaky solution is the simplest.

• An explanatory note
  In which we admit to lying in our previous book
• Introduction: Putting the Freak in Economics
  In which the global financial meltdown is entirely ignored in favor of more engaging topics
  • The perils of walking drunk
  • The unlikely savior of Indian women
  • Drowning in horse manure
  • What is "freakonomics," anyway?
  • Toothless sharks and bloodthirsty elephants
  • Things you always thought you knew but didn't
• Chapter 1: How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?
  In which we explore the various costs of being a woman
  • Meet LaSheena, a part-time prostitute
  • One million dead "witches"
  • The many ways in which females are punished for being born female
  • Even Radcliffe women pay the price
  • Title IX creates jobs for women; men take them
  • 1 of every 50 women a prostitute
  • The booming sex trade in old-time Chicago
  • A survey like no other
  • The erosion of prostitute pay
  • Why did oral sex get so cheap?
  • Pimps versus Realtors
  • Why cops love prostitutes
  • Where did all the schoolteachers go?
  • What really accounts for the male-female wage gap?
  • Do men love money the way women love kids?
  • Can a sex change boost your salary?
  • Meet Allie, the happy prostitute; why aren't there more women like her?
• Chapter 2: Why should suicide bombers buy life insurance?
  In which we discuss compelling aspects of birth and death, though primarily death
  • The worst month to have a baby
  • The natal roulette affects horses too
  • Why Albert Aab will outshine Albert Zyzmore
  • The birthdate bulge
  • Where does talent come from?
  • Some families produce baseball players; others produce terrorists
  • Why terrorism is so cheap and easy
  • The trickle-down effect of September 11
  • The man who fixes hospitals
  • Why the newest ERs are already obsolete
  • How can you tell a good doctor from a bad one?
  • Why you want your ER doc to be a woman
  • A variety of ways to postpone death
  • Why is chemotherapy so widely used when it so rarely works?
  • "We're still getting our butts kicked by cancer"
  • War: not as dangerous as you think?
  • How to catch a terrorist
• Chapter 3: Unbelievable stories about apathy and altruism
  In which people are revealed to be less good than previous thought, but also less bad
  • Why did 38 people watch Kitty Genovese be murdered?
  • With neighbors like these
  • What caused the 1960s crime explosion?
  • How the ACLU encourages crime
  • Leave It to Beaver: not as innocent as you think
  • The roots of altruism, pure and impure
  • Who visits retirement homes?
  • Natural disasters and slow news days
  • Economists make like Galíleo and hit the lab
  • The brilliant simplicity of the Dictator game
  • People are so generous!
  • Thank goodness for "donorcycles"
  • The great Iranian kidney experiment
  • From driving a truck to the ivory tower
  • Why don't real people behave like people in the lab?
  • The dirty rotten truth about altruism
  • Scarecrows work on people too
  • Kitty Genovese revisited
• Chapter 4: The fix is in — and it's cheap and simple
  In which big, seemingly intractable problems are solved in surprising ways
  • The dangers of childbirth
  • Ignatz Semmelweis to the rescue
  • How the Endangered Species Act endangered species
  • Creative ways to keep from paying for your trash
  • Forceps hoarding
  • The famine that wasn't
  • Three hunded thousand dead whales
  • The mysteries of polio
  • What really prevented your heart attack?
  • The killer car
  • The strange story of Robert McNamara
  • Let's drop some skulls down the stairwell!
  • Hurray for seat belts
  • What's wrong with riding shotgun?
  • How much good do car seats do?
  • Crush-test  dummies tell no lies
  • Why hurricanes kill, and what can be done about it
• Chapter 5: What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?
  In which we take a cool, hard look at global warming
  • Let's melt the ice cap!
  • What's worse: car exhaust or cow farts?
  • If you love earth, eat more kangaroo
  • It all comes down to negative externalities
  • The Club versus LoJack
  • Mount Pinatubo teaches a lesson
  • The obscenely smart, somewhat twisted gentlemen of Intellectual Ventures
  • Assassinating mosqitoes
  • "Sir, I am every kind of scientist!"
  • An inconvenient truthiness
  • What climate model miss
  • Is carbon dioxide the wrong villain?
  • "Big-ass volcanoes" and climate change
  • How to cool the earth
  • The "garden hose to the sky"
  • Reasons to hate geoengineering
  • Jumping the repugnance barrier
  • "Soggy mirrors" and the puffy-cloud solution
  • Why behavior change is so hard
  • Dirty hands and deadly doctors
  • Foreskins are falling
• Epilogue: Monkeys are people too
  In which it is revealed that — aw, hell, you have to read it to believe it

Interestingly, the authors continues to warn about too easy correlations and the misuse about statistics. Unfortunately, they also continues to glorify themselves, to the point where it gets irritating.

They also tries to reflect some of the criticism about their research for the previous book, but that was expected and doesn't impede the readability of the book (even though you need to have read the previous book of course, to understand some of their references).

But the book blows up in the last, opiniated, non-researched, and out of context, chapter. The respect for the authors are so much diminished, so you question if they have in fact written it!

Still, with the exception of the self-glorification and the last chapter, the book is still worth reading, but it doesn't give you any more insight than the previous book.