Vote Your Conscience

Time Out New York is the magazine that people buy when they’re visiting New York and want to know where to go and what to see. (It’s a British import but has been here at least 10 years by now; secret confession: my family and many other New Yorkers use it too, all the time.)

This week, T.O.N.Y. is running a contest called “The Ultimate N.Y. Book Bracket,” where readers can choose which books are “most essential to life — and cocktail conversation — in New York City.” The fun part is that the contest is set up as an elimination bracket (think the NCAA basketball tournament), so there will be many victories and many defeats.

Freakonomics is in the running (although rendered as “Freakomics”), and in the first round we go up against a toughie: Tom Friedman‘s hugely influential The World Is Flat. Friedman, like Levitt, is from Minneapolis; Friedman is a N.Y. Times employee, as I used to be. Since we have so much in common, a vote for one book would seem to be just as good as a vote for the other. So you might as well just vote for us.