Book Review: Superfreakonomics

I decided to buy the book Superfreakonomics while in Cairns as I was sure wasting a lot of money on trashy mags.  I hadn't brought with me the book which sits in my 'Currently Reading' sidebar but to be honest, so far it has been quite the crappy read.

Before I start my review, I do need to ask why the fark are books so expensive in Oz?!?  Superfreakonomics was placed on a shelf well beyond my reach and so I requested assistance from the shop staff to bring it down for me to purchase.  They scanned the book at the till and I was taken aback to see that it cost 30-something dollars! Ok, ok in the scheme of things that's not really expensive (when you compare it to a say... a car) but as a new release, this book retails on Amazon for half the price I paid!  With free delivery too!

Well I was much the fan of it's predecessor Freakonomics, so I was pretty excited (as excited you can be about economics) about this book's release.  "Important" questions such as why a street prostitute is similar to a department store Santa are answered and once again, economic principles are applied to explain the unlikeliest of relationships.  I particularly enjoyed the chapter on apathy and altruism and was not surprised to find out that altruism isn't necessarily inherent in humans.  People just aren't themselves if they know they're the subject of an experiment!  Of course they want to make themselves look good!

I did find that the last chapter on global warming dragged a bit.  Not that I don't care about environmental issues but I just didn't want to read about it in a book I was otherwise thoroughly enjoying.  (I actually rationed my reading to avoid finishing the book too soon - Nerd!)  Also, it probably didn't help that I was reading this chapter on the plane next to a screaming toddler.

If you enjoyed the first book, you should enjoy parts if not all of it.  There are plenty of reviews out there which question the validity of the research but this review isn't one of them.  I just liked reading it and am not interested in the intricacies of the data.  The book doesn't quite have the same impact and newish insight of it's predecessor but hey, what do you expect from a sequel?

Quality of Content:  4
Readability: 4
Would I recommend this book: Yep
Who to:  Same as my Freakonomics review - To everyone except those who can't quite grasp.... concepts of any kind.