Freakonomics Born Again

Freakonomics was originally published in April, 2005, with high hopes but low expectations. Now, roughly 2 million U.S. copies and many foreign editions later, we have just published a Revised and Expanded version (here it is on Amazon). I blogged earlier about the differences between the original version and the new one, which includes about 90 pages of new material, drawn mainly from our New York Times columns and from this very blog. Many thanks to all of you — readers who pointed out errors in the original edition, readers who suggested blog postings, Paul Tough and Aaron Retica at the New York Times — for all your help on this new edition. And thanks especially to Lisa Gallagher and Lynn Grady at William Morrow/HarperCollins for making the publishing transition from old version to new one so very smooth. (Levitt and I were in Las Vegas yesterday — on business, natch — and were astonished to see that even the airport stores already had the new version front and center.)

In other Freakonomics news:

We picked up a Visionary Award the other night from the National Council on Economic Education. My personal highlights were: sitting next to the Princeton economist Alan Krueger (who presented the Freakonomics award) and chatting with a bunch of schoolkids from Queens who were fans of Jim Cramer, another NCEE honoree. The kids apparently began watching Cramer’s TV show while playing an NCEE stock-market game, wrote him some fan mail, and Cramer was good enough to buy a couple tables at the awards dinner for the kids. Cramer is truly a one-of-a-kind guy, on many many dimensions.

Word is that Freakonomics has finally reached the N.B.A. — sort of. We know the book has been read in the N.F.L., in Major League Baseball, even in Hollywood. Now we find that a Boston Celtics Dancer named Alexis is also a fan. Maybe she can slip her copy to Paul Pierce when she’s done.

And finally, thanks also to all of you who filled out the survey for our new advertising overlord, Federated Media. There were 711 respondents, which is about 706 more than I would have predicted; here are the results.