In the introduction to Freakonomics (to which Superfreakonomics is a "sequel"), authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner basically apologize to the reader, because the book has no theme. No underlying message, or even moral. It consists of a collection of disjointed stories with nothing apparently in common, other than that they are all stories that resulted from applying economic analysis to non-economics data.
I thought there was, in fact, a very powerful theme in Freakonomics, and expected the introduction of Superfreakonomics to address it. But it didn't. In fact, the only reference they make to the "theme" that I thought was very clear and consistent throughout both books was in the subtitle of Freakonomics: "A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything".
To me, the books illustrate with jaw-dropping power that many of the "facts" that we encounter every day have surprisingly little basis in reality. That relatively little of the information we hear and read can be assumed to be completely true. Car seats make kids safer, right? Well, according to Levitt's analysis of 45,000 crash records, no. No-one knows for sure how much cheating there is in professional sports, right? Well, actually, you can answer this "unanswerable" question with almost complete certainty (again, through analysis of large samples of data).
The message that accepting "facts" as being complete certainties can get societies into a lot of trouble is a powerful message indeed, and a more useful "moral" than most novels provide. Ultimately, if people were even a little more uncertain about the facts that are presented to them by the news, advertising, etc., our society would be in much better shape.
So if, by some miracle of the Interwebz, one of the authors is reading this review, don't sell yourselves short. Your books have a brilliant theme, and a powerful message that is communicated with stunning persuasiveness. Sure, the wisdom you share is disguised as "entertaining stories", but hey, the bible was just a bunch of "entertaining stories" too... (no, I'm not saying Freakonomics is biblical -it just uses the same literary tricks to present its message...)
It's not perfect -there were certain cases where I could think of alternative ways to interpret the data they present- but these are minor imperfections in books that, I think, should be on every high school reading list.
