"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? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? 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...

"Based on real accounts of Britain's Land Girls and the Forgotten Blitz, The British Booksellers highlights the courageous choices we must make to live, love, and - in the face of all that tests us - fight for what matters most"--

"In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the landmark book Freakonomics comes this curated collection from the most readable economics blog in the universe. When Freakonomics was first published, the authors started a blog--and they've kept it up. The writing is more casual, more personal, even more outlandish than in their books. Now they've gone through and picked the best of the best. Here, they ask a host of typically off-center questions: Why...

In this revised and updated edition of Steven Landsburg's hugely popular book, he applies economic theory to today's most pressing concerns, answering a diverse range of daring questions, such as:- Why are seat belts deadly?- Why do celebrity endorsements sell products? Why are failed executives paid so much? Who should bear the cost of oil spills? Do government deficits matter? How is workplace safety bad for workers? What's wrong with the local...

To predict our future, we must look to the extremes. So argues the economist Richard Davies, who takes readers to the margins of the modern economy and beyond. These extreme economies illustrate the forces that test human resilience, drive societies to failure, and promise to shape our collective future. Reviving a foundational idea from the medical sciences, Extreme Economies turns the logic of modern economics on its head by arguing that these outlier...

Stanford economist Paul Oyer offers an informative view of modern microeconomics based on his experiences with online dating.

"Economists have long based their forecasts on financial aggregates such as price-earnings ratios, asset prices, and exchange rate fluctuations, and used them to produce statistically informed speculations about the future--with limited success. Robert Shiller employs such aggregates in his own forecasts, but has famously complemented them with observations about the influence of mass psychology on certain events. This approach has come to be known...

"The author posits that successful democracies require balance between competitive markets, honest governments and local communities. Currently, as markets scale up, states scale up too; Rajan offers an alternative: strengthening local communities." --