When Numbers Solve a Mystery reviews Levitt’s Freakonomics:
Then it’s on to another question, and another and another. Were lynchings, as their malevolent perpetrators hoped, an effective way to keep Southern blacks ‘in their place’? Do real-estate agents really represent their clients’ interests? Why do so many drug dealers live with their mothers? Which parenting strategies work and which don’t? Does a good first name contribute to success in life?Mr. Levitt is hardly the first to attack these questions; there is no end of books on parenting strategy, for example. The difference is that Mr. Levitt knows what he is talking about. Where other parenting books rely on either puerile psychological theorizing or leaps of logic from haphazard numerical correlations, Mr. Levitt relies on his instinct for analyzing data. As a result, there is more valuable parenting advice in Mr. Levitt’s single chapter than in all the rest of Barnes & Noble. And some of it is going to shock you. One example: It turns out that reading to your children has no appreciable effect on their academic success.