SuperFreakonomics in the News

There’s a price war going on among booksellers — WalMart is offering a handful of big new books for just $10, which forced Amazon to counter — but unfortunately, SuperFreakonomics is not one of them. On Amazon, it costs $16.19. Is it worth it?
To help you decide, here’s a roundup of some early notices for the book:

• TIME magazine: “It’s very good — jauntier and more assured than their first.
• Telegraph: “As one of the most successful writing partnerships in publishing, they make an entirely complementary and logical team in the same way that Jack Spratt and his wife did at the dinner table.”
• Smart Money: “SuperFreakonomics provides a refreshingly logical look at some divisive political problems, with studies that encourage the reader to look beyond the surface and to question common wisdom.”
• EconLog: “If everyone read SuperFreakonomics and believed it, the world would change for the better.”
• Wallet Pop: “It’s a book that will get you thinking after, if not before, any decision you make based on an incentive.”

And in The Week, Dubner and Levitt offer a list of six books they loved. Several have already been mentioned on this blog, and then there’s Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, by David J.C. MacKay. Here’s what they write:

Anyone who wants to understand global warming — and not everyone does, since they’ve got their platitudes to defend — needs to find a ­physicist to cut through the fog. MacKay might be your man. His clarifying mantra: “Numbers, not adjectives.” Go ahead and unplug your phone charger every night if you must, he writes, but that’s the equivalent to “bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon.”