Read by Steven J. Dubner.

The author offers his view of how the economy really works, examining issues from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing, offering a very different view on what drives the economy.

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe volume Wade have on violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life, from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing, and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: "Freakonomics". Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives, how people get what they want or need especially when other people want or need the same thing. In "Freakonomics", they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang.