Steven Dubner's Freakonomics

Freakonomics is a non-fiction book that talks about how everything has a hidden side to it. Steven D. Levitt and Stephan J. Dubner are both economist and authors’ of the book. Published in 2005 the book was made into a controversy due to its view points and was even a New York Times Bestseller. I first thought that the authors’ purpose was to inform the public about how we have to analyze things more closely in order to find the truth. However upon reading the epilogue, in the end, the authors reveal that they don’t really want people to take action after reading the book per say. They just want people to be more cautious towards generally accepted beliefs/opinions, or “conventional wisdom” as the authors phrase it in the book. Again in the epilogue the authors state that there is no unifying theme in the book, although I do believe that conventional wisdom and analyzing things more closely are big themes

They use a lot of explanations and data in the book making some of the passages easier to comprehend. However there formal wording style is sometimes difficult to follow especially when they begin to talk about very different subjects and how they are connected, which they do often in the book. Right off the bat in the first chapter of Freakonomics Levitt and Dubner explain to their audience the hidden side of people. By comparing two very different types of people, a teacher and a sumo wrestler and show what they have in common. And to summarize it would be that both parties will cheat given the right situation in order to benefit themselves. Basically what they mean is that no matter who the person is, they will commit a corrupted action if there are no consequences stopping them to do so. They apply this idea with the Ku Klux Klan and Real Estate Agents as well in the second