Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, is less interested by numbers and more interested to know why people are turning on how they are doing. It examines the influence of motivation, heredity, the district where you grew up, etc.
Some of its conclusions are less sensational. For example, African-American names (deshawn, LaTanya) do not influence the performance of the African-American test. In a second example, Levitt has compiled data on online dating sites and concluded that bald men and women Fared badly overweight. No brainer.
However, Levitt animates the book with controversial discussions. He believes that the dramatic drop in crime in the 1990s can be attributed to the Roe v. Wade decision. He thinks that children who have committed crimes (reason to be raised by poor, adolescents, single mothers) are simply not being born as often.
He also wrote about the man who more or less alone, has contributed to the disappearance of the KKK in infiltrating their group and fled their passwords and secret rituals for the folks behind comic Superman (Superman needed a new enemy).
Interestingly, it also explains how the authoritarian parents do not contribute to the success of a child. For example, have a lot of books in the home has a positive influence on the results of the tests of the child, but the reading to a child a lot has no effect. Highly educated parents are also a plus, then television time limiting children is irrelevant. Similarly, political candidates who have plenty of money to finance their campaigns are still no luck if nobody loves them.
In the chapter entitled "why drug dealers live with their mother,"Levitt explores the drug economy. An Indian Researcher affiliated Harvard decided to move closer and staff with crack gangs and got some notebooks which document their finances. Levitt concludes that the empires of drug traffickers are kinda like McDonald or the publishing industry in Manhattan - only people on the top of the pyramid do well financially, while the fins Burger, edition, and low-level drug dealers assistants do not (indeed, some of them work for free or in Exchange for protection!)
Overall, this reading is a lively, with obvious conclusions and other not so obvious.