{"id":814,"date":"2014-08-06T14:44:43","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T22:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=814"},"modified":"2014-08-06T14:45:46","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T22:45:46","slug":"review-think-like-a-freak-the-authors-of-freakonomics-offer-to-retrain-your-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/06\/review-think-like-a-freak-the-authors-of-freakonomics-offer-to-retrain-your-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Think<\/a>
\nThink Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain<\/a> by Steven D. Levitt<\/a>
\nMy rating: 2 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

Was waiting in a bar for a friend to show up, so I sipped a beer and read a bit of Think Like a Freak<\/i>. I had already read what I thought was half of it\u2014and then suddenly the book was done. I had been fooled by the page count, not realizing that the end notes would take up a quarter of the pages. A bit of an anti-climax.<\/p>\n

Which is sort of what this book is overall: anticlimactic. Not that it\u2019s bad. But after the \u201ccool\u201d factor of Freakonomics<\/i> and Superfreakonomics<\/i>, Think Like a Freak<\/i> was a bit thin. Like a good broth\u2014a good broth can be very delicious, but not after a buttery baked potato and a thick steak.<\/p>\n

The writers do offer a few examples to illustrate their lessons on \u201cthinking like an economist i.e. consider people\u2019s motivations\u201d which are fun an interesting, and would make the book a decent bathroom read or something to pick up for a few bucks off the remainder shelves. But not nearly worth the full price I paid.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if \u201cpublish or perish\u201d is a compelling motivator for non-fiction writers like these, but that\u2019s what this book felt like: something they needed to put out there so their names stay relevant and they get more folks listening to their podcasts. I know writing isn\u2019t their full-time job\u2014 and Think Like a Freak<\/i> feels like it.<\/p>\n

This is a gimme, a side-bar, perhaps a fat appendix at the end of the of the SuperDuper Freakonomics Compendium<\/i>. Read it if you\u2019ve got disposable income and nothing better to do. Or you want to kill an evening. But don\u2019t, like the other books, think of this as an investment at all.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt My rating: 2 of 5 stars Was waiting in a bar for a friend to show up, so I sipped a beer and read a bit of Think Like a Freak. I had already read what I thought … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-d8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":816,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions\/816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}