Nobel Prize winner Steven D. Levitt takes a detour from his usual field of economics to make a hypothesis in his new book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything: that life’s mysteries aren’t as mysterious as they seem, and the answers can be found by asking the right questions and making connections. A controversial example is Levitt’s contention that the recent drop in violent crime is simply because there are less violent criminals - to put it bluntly, because many would-be criminals were aborted. Levitt argues that the Roe v. Wade decision pre-empted the existence of people who would be born into a world of hardship. Together with co-writer Stephen J. Dubner, Levitt explores this and other mysteries like structures of street gangs and patterns of baby names, all under the assumption that phenomenda can be understood if you look at it from the right perspective.
