My weekend review

After reading spectacular reviews of both Blink and Freakonomics, I was expecting to be dazzled by the innovative approach to thinking and economics that the reviewers suggested the books offered. But while both books were interesting, neither struck me as the riveting reads the reviewers led me to expect. The books were very similar in that they were basically a compilation of suggestive studies, accounts, statistics, and the like, unified with commentary by the authors — well, in theory at least. The commentary offered by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink was often weak, and resulted in a book that didn’t seem very well integrated. And Stephen Dubner begins Freakonomics saying that the Levitt’s theories lack a unifying theme. But as a whole, I thought both Blink and Freakonomics made for quality interesting reading material.