The legendary bestseller that made millions look at the world in a radically different way
returns in a beautiful 20th anniversary edition featuring a new foreword Which is more
dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? What do
real estate agents and the KKK have in common? These may not sound like typical questions for
an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded
scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and
child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a
groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner an award-winning author and
journalist. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues others have an admittedly
freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics. Through
forceful storytelling and wry insight Levitt and Dubner show that economics is at root the
study of incentives—how people get what they want or need especially when other people want
or need the same thing. In Freakonomics they explore the hidden side of everything. The inner
workings of a crack gang. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating
schoolteacher. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world despite a great
deal of complexity and downright deceit is not impenetrable is not unknowable and—if the
right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of
looking. Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we
would like the world to work then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true
that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand
cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the
way we view the modern world. This 20th anniversary edition of the book includes a gorgeous new
cover design and a new foreword by Stephen Dubner reflecting on the unexpected impact
Freakonomics has had on the world over the last two decades as well as the New York Times
Magazine profile Dubner wrote about Levitt that started it all.
