Freakonomics

I think The Goal is one of those books that has had a profound positive impact on my life. Another one is Freakonomics. There are no books that would teach us concepts such as Theory of constraints and economic incentives in the fun and simple way like these books.

I loved Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner!

Freakonomics - good “everything you know is wrong” Promote yourself - meh “just become an influencer and pick a new job” Extreme Ownership - good “navy seal war story -> leadership principle -> business application” x12 Rise - good “wow I have an easy life” Drive - good “some people like doing stuff just because” The Accounting Game - good “money explained to a kid to make you feel vetter about not understanding money”

Quran, a very superior all in one book, I have never seen a book as expressive as this one, I invite anyone just to "try" it ;) Freakonomics, is a good one about economy from a new angle of view

* Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell * Freakenomics * Slideology * The Checklist Manifesto

I'll skip some mentioned already by others. Books I really enjoyed this year: The Wright Brothers, David McCullough - wonderful book on the Wright Brothers, easy to read, shows that persistence and logic thinking pays out. 5/5 The autobiography of Malcom X, Malcolm X - Nice bio, a bit repetitive sometimes. 3/5 Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand - Although the book has more than 1200 pages it really kept me going. I read this book to get a better understanding of the ideology of some republicans. Fun read. 4.5/5 Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt - Levitt studies all kind of different everyday questions using economics. 4/5, short, easy to read Guantanamo Diary, Mohamedou Ould Slahi - Diary of a Guantanamo prisoner who has been imprisoned since 2002. The US has never charged him with a crime. Profound and disturbing. 5/5 No place to hide, Glenn Greenwald - Story on Edward Snowden, probably read by most of HN. Enjoyed it, that's it. 4/5 How to lie with statistics, Darrel Huff - Short book on statistics, easy to read and fun. 4/5

Recently finished Freakonomics (S Dubner & S Levitt) and East of Eden (Steinbeck). Highly recommend the latter, but Freakonomics was a bit of a disappointment, possibly because it was overhyped to me beforehand. Worth a read, though.

Some titles I've recently read or at least have placed on my reading list. -------------------- Philosohpy Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium - Seneca Meditations - Marcus Aurelius (must read) The Republic - Plato -------------------- History Five Chimneys - Olga Lengyel The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (must read) The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank -------------------- Fiction (particularly dystopian) 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451 (crime/action) Child 44, The Secret Speech, Agent 6 - Tom Rob Smith -------------------- Economics Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty - Banerjee, Duflo Why Nations Fail - Robinson -------------------- Economics/Decision making/Psychology Undercover Economist, Freakonomics, Nudge, Thinking Fast and Slow -------------------- Random titles The Selfish Gene, Self-Reliance, The Elements of Style (about writing), Slaughterhouse-Five -------------------- Some links to inspire your reading (though you may want to checkout the websites first to get an idea of the topics they cover) http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books…

These are the ones I remember, but not necessarily for being the best. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson. I thought it was interesting; an honest attempt at cataloguing the life of a fascinating and complex person. How To Win Friends And Influence People - Dale Carnegie. I'd skimmed through it in high school, and decided it was full of obvious/cheesy platitudes, but was somehow convinced to take another look this year and I'm very glad I did. It is mostly full of very basic "don't be an ass" advice, but I needed it. Never Eat Alone - Keith Ferrazzi. I'm not sure what to think of this one. It's pretty low on actionable advice, but it did help me (together with HTWFAIF, above) reframe the way I approach interpersonal relationships. The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje. I haven't finished this one yet, but it's part of a recent concerted effort to read more fiction. I've always loved Ondaatje's work, and this latest novel is no different. Freakonomics - Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner. I just started reading this last night, and I'm already 100 pages in. It's an addicting read, and is already causing me to re-evaluate the incentive systems that are everywhere.…

On my desk: Getting Real (37Signals), Hardball (Chris Mathews), Prioritizing Web Usability (Jakob Nielsen) Nearby shelf: The Design of Everyday Things, Maverick, Founders at work, A Brief History of Time, A Pattern Language, Peopleware, Made to stick, Web Standards Solutions, Designing Interactions, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Mythical Man-Month, Oh, the Places You'll Go! Other good reads: Blink, Tipping Point, Long Tail, Freakonomics

The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman I know he's gotten some flak lately for ripping on 37signals, but this book seriously changed how I look at the world... especially doors. Freakonomics - Steven Levitt Good for understanding the value of taking another perspective.

Fiction: - The Time Machine (still holds up very well, and seems strangely eerie and prescient in places)... (H. G. Wells) - Dune (Frank Herbert) - The Hobbit (and LotR) (Tolkien) - Neuromancer (William Gibson) - Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties (I picked up Idoru first, so I haven't yet read Virtual Light) (also Gibson) - The Difference Engine (Gibson, Sterling) - Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) - Cryptonomicon (" ") - Circuit of Heaven, End of Days (Dennis Danvers) - All of the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories and novels. (Fritz Leiber) - The Earthsea trilogy (Ursula K. LeGuin) - 'salem's Lot (Stephen King) - Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein) - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) - the Coldfire trilogy (C. S. Friedman) - various Cory Doctorow short stories - Kamikaze L'Amour (Richard Kadrey) - Lightpaths (Howard V. Hendrix) - A Canticle For Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.) - Moonwar, Venus (Ben Bova) - the Stainless Steel Rat series (Harry Harrison) - Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) - Ringworld (Larry Niven) - Cthon (Piers Anthony) -- Trippiness level approaching Philip Jose Farmer ;-) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)…

There is definitely some of that. After all the book is targeted towards a popular audience. But that being said there are a couple of remarkably original ideas. For example, going from least to most intersting: 1. Statistically speaking a child is much more likely to drown in a swimming pool than be killed by a gun (of course, corrected for socioeconomic status and all the standard stuff.) Yet we see countless campaigns against gun violence with the argument that x number of kids get killed due to guns, and none for "swimming pool safety" or a host of other things that are far more likely to kill you. 2. There is a study of a daycare center where a problem they were dealing with was parents picking up kids late. So the daycare instituted fines. The result was more parents picking up their kids late. Why? because after conducting interviews they found that the guilt associated with being late was more of a motivator than the small fine. Having paid the fine, the parents no longer felt as bad about being late. That's a very conterintuitive result if you ask me.…

Freakonomics is a great book because it introduces fundamental principles of economics on intuitive grounds. So you're not talking about incentives with respect to society or some other abstract entity, but with respect to specific cases. Plus, as I mentioned above, it's an extremely fun read. Very well written and the ideas presented are definitely compelling. I'd recommend to go as far as to read the original research papers that the book is based on. Especially the abortion-crime one.

Is freakonomics pretty credible? It seemed intriguing, but also smelt a bit of marketing obvious ideas when I flipped through it in the store.

It's pretty tragic how little most people understand about basic economics. Not just with respect to how societies function, but basic concepts like incentives and the law of supply and demand. Oh, and of course No Free Lunch. So in that spirit, here are a couple of economics books that I quite seriously believe everyone should be forced to read. Economics in One Lesson, by Hazlitt Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, by Milton and Rose Friedman Freakonomics, by Levitt and Dubner (this book is just so damn fun to read) and for the hackers: The God of the Machine, by Paterson (Think engineering principles as applied to economics, history and politics. Probably one of the most interesting books I've read in my entire life, even if I don't entirely agree with the thesis.)