A lot of people were surprised when Oprah Winfrey called in during Larry King’s interview of James Frey to stand behind Frey in the mess about whether, or just how much, Frey fictionalized his experiences in A Million Little Pieces. Winfrey argued that while some of Frey’s details may not be the stuff of non-fiction, the overall reading experience resonated . . .
Well, probably not. But Freakonomics is among the books that Elizabeth and John Edwards (remember them?) are considering for the next book in their online book group. Here’s the link.
It’s something that a lot of people think about, but rarely does anyone come right out and accuse the National Football League of rigging its games. For a conspiracy theorist, or even just a guy holding a losing betting slip that was a winner right up ’til that bogus call with 30 seconds left that allowed the underdog to close . . .
Last weekend, in the Cincinnati Bengals’ first playoff game in 15 years, quarterback Carson Palmer was badly injured on the Bengals’ second play from scrimmage. Kimo von Oelhoffen, a lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers, tackled him low and Palmer’s knee essentially collapsed. (The Bengals went on to lose to the Steelers, a team that happens to be my favorite, but . . .
If I were a Realtor, I might feel right about now that the entire free world has turned against me, having decided I’m a sharp-elbowed, greed-driven hustler trying to preserve an advantage that I don’t deserve. And I’d probably be right. In today’s New York Times is yet another chronicle of how the National Association of Realtors has used its . . .
For all the talk in recent years of how the Internet will kill off the already dwindling audience of book readers, it struck me recently that perhaps this theory will prove to be exactly wrong. One of the most common Internet memes is the reading list — a 50-book challenge or some such — in which people all over the . . .
One of the frustrations of any author is that very few books are published in large-print editions. I’m guessing the economics are quite perilous but still, it is frustrating that so many elderly and vision-impaired readers don’t have an appropriate version to read. Well, it took 9 months but Freakonomics is at last available in a large-print, paperback edition. Here’s . . .
The first round of signed bookplates, about 800 or so, have been sent out. Another 1,200 should be mailed within a week or two. Thanks for your requests and especially your patience. It turns out, however, that the reward may not be worth the wait. Here is an e-mail from one recent bookplate recipient: Thank you very much for the . . .
In yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, and in accompanying blog posts here and here, we described how one of the stories in our book turned out to be a little less true than we thought. Now comes word that James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces is also more of a based-on-a-true story book than an actual work of nonfiction. The . . .
Our latest column in The New York Times Magazine is a pretty unusual one. In the past, we’ve written about child car seats, dog poop, the price of sex, the economics of voting, and monkeys learning to use money. In this column, we revisited a story we told in Freakonomics. In the chapter called “How Is the Ku Klux Klan . . .
So Levitt and I were in Las Vegas this weekend, doing some research. (Seriously.) We had a little downtime and we decided to play blackjack. It was New Year’s Eve, at Caesars Palace, about 9 p.m. We sat down at an empty table where the dealer, a nice young woman from Michigan, was very patient in teaching us the various . . .
We’ve started to get e-mails from increasingly far-flung places, asking when Freakonomics is being published in other countries and languages. So we asked for a list of the foreign publication schedule, and here’s what we got. The first group is an alphabetical list of the countries where the book has already been published or will be soon. The second group . . .
In today’s New York Times review of Rodney Stark’s book Victory of Reason, which asserts that historical Christianity helped the development of capitalism far more than it hindered the same, William Grimes (the reviewer) offers this tasty example: Christian theology, which Mr. Stark praises as constantly evolving, kept pace with economic developments. Thinkers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas gave their . . .
We haven’t written much on this blog about customer satisfaction outside of this little rant about rancid chicken and, even more tangentially, this one about mood-tracking software. But here’s something worth looking into a bit more seriously. Claes Fornell, a b-school professor at Michigan and the man behind the American Customer Satisfaction Index, has co-written a new paper asserting that . . .
An economist at an elite university, wishing to remain anonymous, has written the following rap in honor of Levitt. S/he sent it directly to me (Dubner) to ensure that even Levitt doesn’t know who wrote it. I think you’ll agree it’s sick enough to be worthwhile. Sing it to the tune of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems.” If you’re getting rejected I . . .
There’s an article in today’s New York Times about “Deal or No Deal.” (See previous posts here, here and here.) From the headline — “A Game Show for the Probabilities Theorist in All of Us” — it sounds like it might be heading into a nifty theoretical realm but, alas, it is really a TV review at heart.
So, first of all, Happy ChanuKwanzaMasNewYear to everyone. And thanks for making 2005 such a freakonomical year. A while back, we offered to send a signed bookplate to anyone who wanted one. The good news is that about 2,000 of you replied. The bad news is that about 2,000 of you replied. The demand severely outstripped not only our supply . . .
Levitt went home last weekend to visit his family in Minn./St. Paul, and look what happened: the local newspaper got hold of him for a Q&A. (Note: if Levitt were actually awarded the Clark Medal in 1994, as the paper states, he would have been only 27; the actual year was 2004.)
We’ve heard reports here and there of expectant parents plucking a name or two from the various lists of first names in Freakonomics, but these folks are taking it pretty seriously. Personally, I’d vote for “Lucienne Rachel,” even though I’d prefer “Lucienne Aviva.”
Here’s concrete proof: an article in the new issue of Newsweek is headlined “Economics: Sexiest Trade Alive,” and credits Freakonomics with leading the way.
According to the New York Times, the most blogged-about book of the year is Freakonomics. Here is the complete list; and here is a rather exhaustive list of Freakonomics blog citations. (Thanks to Connie Sartain for the links.)
Earlier I mentioned that my undergrad alma mater, Appalachian State University, was playing for the NCAA I-AA national championship. Well, they won, the first national title in any sport for the university. Congratulations to one and all. When I was there, they had a Top 10 soccer program, full of African and Irish and South American players. Thompson Usiyan, from . . .
The new issue of People lists the 10 best-selling movies, books, CDs, DVDs, etc. of the year. Freakonomics was the No. 7 book among those first published in 2005. (The new Harry Potter was No. 1 by a landslide.) Here, from the other categories, are the other No. 7’s. #7 movie: Madagascar #7 CD: Gwen Stefani: Love. Angel. Music. Baby. . . .
Now we learn that iTunes has named Freakonomics its Editors’ Pick for 2005. Very nice. That and $2.00 will get you a subway ride — unless, of course, NYC transit workers really do go on strike on Friday, as they are threatening, in which case $2.00 will get you one cup of strong Starbucks coffee to fortify you for a . . .
Here’s what New York Magazine‘s year-end roundup thinks of Freakonomics: “This book has no thesis, an annoying title, a phony humility, and sundry other grating tropes.” Pretty grim, huh? But in fact the magazine gave Freakonomics a 2005 Culture Award. Here’s the rest of the blurb: “Yet it makes such interesting arguments and compiles such counterintuitive data that you can’t . . .
I did my undergraduate work — which consisted mainly of playing in a punky/country/rock band called The Right Profile — at Appalachian State University, which is located in the mountain town of Boone, N.C. (Levitt probably would have gone there too, if he had gotten in, but he had to settle for Harvard.) A.S.U. is not well-known nationally but that . . .
A bunch of people have asked what the illustration that accompanied our latest N.Y. Times column is supposed to mean. Honestly, I have no idea. If you want to see a considerably less abstruse illustration concerning Freakonomics, take a look at this. It was done by a Portuguese artist, Goncalo Viana, to illustrate our Times column as it is carried . . .
The latest runaway best-seller in Brazil is the autobiography of a young prostitute, Raquel Pacheco, a.k.a. Bruna the Surfer Girl. The book is called The Sweet Venom of the Scorpion: The Diary of a Call Girl and here’s what Reuters has to say: “In just over a month, it has sold some 30,000 copies and is already in its third . . .
I’ve just returned from a quick trip to British Columbia (specifically to the ski town of Whistler, to which one can only properly say “wow”), and a couple of things from western Canada caught my eye. The first is this blog post about the use of urinalysis for construction job applicants in Alberta, where the long-standing oil rush is headier . . .
On a few occasions in the past, we’ve asked you to vote for awards for which Freakonomics was nominated, and you did, and we were and remain grateful. Now, if you’re not too exhausted to vote again, there’s another award (albeit a very small one, given the posted vote tally), and it’s actually a little closer to home because it’s . . .
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