Washoe County Library System

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...

A new theory of how the brain constructs emotions that could revolutionize psychology, health care, the legal system, and our understanding of the human mind. Emotions feel automatic, like uncontrollable reactions to things we think and experience. Scientists have long supported this assumption by claiming that emotions are hardwired in the body or the brain. Today, however, the science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery...

Presents a tenth anniversary, curated collection of blog posts from Freakonomics.com to share insights into the role of luck in making money, the unpredictable nature of winning, and other topics.

A renowned journalist and one-time economics editor of The Economist presents an unconventionally accessible, story-driven look at how forgotten corners of the globe hold vital clues to the worlds economic future.

Are you happy in your marriage--except for those weekly spats over who empties the dishwasher more often? Not a single complaint--unless you count the fact that you haven't had sex since the Bush administration? Prepared to be there in sickness and in health--so long as it doesn't mean compromising? Be honest: Ever lay awake thinking how much more fun married life used to be?

If you're a member of the human race, then the

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You have heard of the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Each is a natural human weakness that impedes happiness. In addition to these vices, however, there are economic sins as well. And they, too, wreak havoc on our lives and in society. They can seem intuitively compelling, yet they lead to waste, loss, and forgone prosperity. In this thoughtful and compelling book, James Otteson tells the story of seven central...

"Why does a disease that killed only a handful of Americans like ebola provoke panic, but the flu-which kills tens of thousands each year-is dismissed with a yawn? Why is an unarmed young black woman who knocks on a stranger's front door to ask for help after her car breaks down perceived to be so threatening that the stranger shoots her dead? In Jumping at Shadows, Sasha Abramsky sets his sights on America's most dangerous epidemic: irrational fear....

"Costa is a brilliant but deeply disillusioned computer engineer who creates a revolutionary technology that inadvertently opens a cosmic wormhole, where he discovers a 2025 radically different from the one he's living in. In it, a global hi-tech uprising has birthed a truly democratized, post-capitalist world. Costa and his friends Iris and Eva develop a deep political obsessions with the Other Now, meeting their DNA doubles, but as the wormhole...

"Is it safer to fly or take the train? How dangerous is skydiving? And is eating that extra sausage going to kill you? We've all heard the statistics for risky activities, but what do they mean in the real world? In The Norm Chronicles, journalist Michael Blastland and risk expert David Spiegelhalter explore these questions through the stories of average Norm and an ingenious measurement called the MicroMort-a one in a million chance of dying. They...