Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime?
These are the kind of questions Levitt asks. He studies the riddles of everyday life-from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing — and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality.

Steven D. Levitt is the Alvin H. Baum Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is also director of The Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author and journalist who lives in New York City. Dubner comes to know Levitt through an interview and together they wrote this book. I listened to it on CD and Levitt was the narrator.

This book has many thought-provoking questions such as did Roe vs. Wade impace violent crime in the late 1980's? This was a hard thing to think about but it did make me think how events in our lives really unfold. I found the chapter on the Ku Klux Klan most interesting not because the authors thought they were like real estate agents but how one man brought them down by selling their secrets to the Superman radio show. The ending was most shocking as well. I will say this while much of what Levitt has to say is kind of out there it made me look at things differently. I think I'll need to read it again - this time in print form.