Freakanomics – Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner

I had been trying to get hold of this book for a long time, and finally managed to read it. (My first book for the year!)

Describing the book is a pretty difficult task as it is the efforts by an economist to explore all sorts of events and which occur in day to day life and about the immediate society we live in rather than the macro issues such as inflation. There is no unifying theme to the book. When I saw the different chapter I was quite intrigued trying to figure out what it was all about, for example the first chapter was titled ‘What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?’… (and I’m going to leave you in suspense to find out for yourself what is common)

In the end the main message that I took away from reading the book is that conventional wisdom in not necessarily the truth and it’s useful to always look at a problem from a different perspective.