Everyone rejoice! From the writers of the original Freakonomics, the new and improved Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance is out! Finally, what we’ve never thought we might want to know (well, most of us, anyway) in a hardcover.

I’m about midway through the book now and I have to say that it’s in a similar vein as the first one; taking an economist’s approach to analyzing human behavior and natural phenomena – the what’s and the why’s. This book tackles the questions that are just too damn interesting to ignore like, “Why aren’t more women prostitutes if it’s such a profitably industry?” (useful information, I’m sure) or “Why is chemotherapy so widely used when it so rarely works?” (that’s an important one) or “Who visits retirement homes?” (downright mind boggling).

All in all, I think this book is a slight improvement over the previous one. It is an easier read (not that the first one was a tough read) and seems to have better flow than the first, which seemed a bit disjointed at certain points. And don’t worry if you haven’t read the original, they have nothing to do with each other, really. Each chapter tackles different questions and it’s better to think of them as separate articles rather than to expect the book to have an intro-climax-outro structure or plotline.

Anyways, if you’ve always wondered if there was a new way of looking at things empirically and without a political or ideological slant, get this book. It’s true facts in your face.