Freak Out

In Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner claim that they are telling just such uncomfortable truths: that drug dealers are poor, that trying to be a good parent doesn't alter your child's prospects, that sumo wrestlers and schoolteachers cheat, and, most contentiously, that legalized abortion has led to a drop in crime. Although the book promises "a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything" (Levitt is an economist, Dubner a New York Times reporter who met Levitt while writing an enthusiastic profile of him), it dodges as many uncomfortable truths as it tells. That's because Levitt is the Times's version of a countercurrent thinker: not one who swims against the stream, but one who circles in interesting eddies. Here, what's hidden isn't the truth obscured by big business, the government, and corporate media. People who swim in these circles dismiss left as well as right, believing some privileged truth is available to the person talented enough to ignore all that partisan arguing.