When I read Freakonomics a few years ago, I was really impressed, as were most people who I talked to about this book. It was completely unlike anything I had read before, and, in retrospect, I think that the fact the authors were applying scientific methods to understand things about society really drew me in. I guess, being a scientist myself, I was impressed with the conclusions that the authors (Dubner and Levitt) could make.
Since reading Freakonomics on some Saturday during my undergrad when I probably should have been studying I have had a lot more time to read. I have read a lot of these social sciences-related books and I guess I have higher standards for what I expect from these types of books. The authors of SuperFreakonomics readily admit that they have no unifying theme. I was okay with that. What they didn't admit was that not even their individual chapters have a theme. The books are essentially a large collection of five page anecdotes thrown together. Many times during the books, I was taken aback by a sudden change in topic. I kept reading, expecting that the interrupting anecdote would relate back to the original topic somehow, but it never did. Reading Superfreakonomics resembled a session of surfing Wikipedia, where you start by reading about Michael Jackson and twenty clicks later you are reading about Peroglyphs with very little substance in between.
The authors of the book also make two stabs at Malcolm Gladwell, essentially accusing him of stealing their ideas. I don't care whose ideas they are (they are some other scientist's or grad student's who is actually doing scientific research), Malcolm Gladwell is a waaayyy better writer who writes in a captivating style and strings his ideas together into one logical and unifying theme.
Thumbs down, Levitt and Dubner.
