When authors of successful non-fiction books toy with the idea of writing a sequel to a multi-million selling title, they are usually gambling against very unfavourable odds. Nonetheless, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner seem to have partially won their bet by publishing a sequel to their highly successful “Freakonomics”. “Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance” is a page-turner, even if it does not shine as brightly as its predecessor.
Levit and Dubner had a daunting task from the very beginning. They had to find a way of applying the same concept that had greatly contributed to the popularity of Freakonomics to new and equally interesting topics. The challenge was massive.
One important hurdle was the public’s overly-high expectations. As a rule, as the pressure for a follow-up to a best seller grows, so do the public’s expectations that the sequel will be better than the original. This renders the success of a sequel all the more difficult to assure.
In the case of a non-fiction like Superfreakonomics, two additional obstacles stood in their way. First, the success of the original owed a great deal to its innovative concept: that of applying the science of economics to explain subjects that at first sight had little to do with the dismal science. Second, the pool of available case studies for the book seems not to have been as bountiful as in the original.
This should provide a window into explaining why Superfreakonomics is at best a meager success. First, Superfreakonomics was not able to count on the novelty factor—given that the market is now replete with books emulating the concept introduced by Levitt—and further the very application of the concept seems to have fallen short of its potential this time around. Second, although still interesting, the topics on which the studies were carried were significantly less startling than in Freakonomics.
Nevertheless, what determines the success of a book such as Superfreakonomics is its power to entertain, and in this regard the authors exceeded their goal. Two of the five topics discussed in the book stand out as the most mesmerizing, to say the least: one on prostitution (Chapter 1), and one on alternative means of fighting global warming (Chapter 5).
It is the chapter on prostitution where Dubner and Levitt come closer to the formulae that assured the success of Freakonomics. To the prurient reader, what at times becomes a detailed study of the high-end escort business offers a powerful hook to the rest of the book. The combination of such a peculiar theme with even more staggering conclusions, such as the finding that an escort gets relatively more money employing a pimp than a homeowner does by employing a realtor, successfully brings the reader back to the unnerving exhilaration felt when reading Freakonomics.
No less interesting is Chapter 5, where the authors engage in a divisive and yet still motivating discussion on the best methods of tackling global warming. The authors smartly and ably introduce geo-engineering as an alternative (even if it is not yet viable) to what has almost become the 21 century’s universal fixation, the curbing of carbon emissions. Although less baffling, this chapter does succeed in captivating the reader’s attention to the very end, by familiarizing them with a string of eerie scientific approaches to cooling down the planet.
Yet even the best chapters of the book are symptomatic of its overarching problems. The chapter on prostitution, even if highly interesting, leaves too many questions unanswered. It spends too much time on side-stories and discussing the rationality of actors (prostitutes and pimps). One of the main conclusions of the chapter—that the business operates according to the laws of demand and supply—is at best mundane.
The Chapter on geo-engineering fares no better in answering the questions it raises. It remains a one-sided story given the quick and curt dismissals of rather valid objections to geo-engineering. If one is to believe what the book says, the only reason why geo-engineering is not seen as a viable option is the public’s ignorance.
Despite these various shortcomings, the book remains a worthwhile read. The three other chapters contain some interesting anecdotes, such as an analysis of the famous Kitty Genovese murder, or an—albeit inconclusive—comparison between the risks of drunk driving and drunk walking.
The success Freakonomics achieved was based on the astonishing insights brought about by Levitt’s able data-mining and analysis coupled to Dubner gifted capacity in turning the results into an interesting story. The problem with Superfreakonomics is that the “insights” are often intuitive, which reduces the reader’s feeling of awe. Contrary to Freakonomics, Superfreakonomics seems to be based overwhelmingly on story-telling at the expense of surprising insights.
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Harper Collins Publishers
October 2009
