I just finished reading the book "Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. "Freakonomics" creatively studies economics instead of boringly stating facts. I feel like the authors wrote this book to get people's minds working and really cracking down on why our society is the way it is in this present time when it comes to money, education, jobs, or social status. The smallest choices like naming your child could potentially affect their futures.
Though I enjoyed the creative economic overview, a lot of the content I found to be upsetting. Anything from African Americans addressing themselves as nigger's to women naming their daughters unbelievably growth stunting names like Temptress and Shithead (shu-TEE-ed). Things like this definitely left a bad impression on me. A lot of the information pertaining to African Americans I found to be offensive, and I felt like the book was extremely one sided.
The chapter that generated the most discussion in our Book Groups was Chapter 6: "The socioeconomic patterns of naming children". Everyone was able to relate to this chapter easily because we all had a few names to give as examples of what not to name our kids. The chapter talked about how your name can affect your ability to land a job over a person with the same exact resume just because of your name.
Reading "Freakonomics" did spark a little more interest in economics for me, but all the misunderstood words and one sided views let me know I'm probably not going to read this book again. It was interesting, but not enough for me. A lot of the studies upset me. "Freakonomics" is definitely a good book just not my particular interest. If your interested in economics this is going to be one of the best books you can read because it does a lot of economical research in a thought provoking interesting way.
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