Questions

Hey Guys...
So our questions are due Jan. 9 (end of the week).
I thought I'd type them up.

1. What do you think was the purpose or intention of your author in writing this book? Is this clear from the beginning or does it unfold as you read on in the text?

2. How is the book organized? Does the author approach the subject in an interesting way? Explain

3. What is the thesis or argument advanced by the author in this work? How does he develop the argument? What evidence or support does he provide? Does he qualify he argument or provide concessions to the opposing viewpoints?

4. What kinds of audience would find this book interesting, useful, or worthwhile? For what reasons? Are there assumptions that the author makes about his audience?

5. Describe the writing style of your author. Is the style formal or informal, academic or personal, wordy or concise? What about the diction of the piece? Is it specialized or general? Give examples that support all of your comments on style.

6. What is the tone of the writer? Explain the connection between the author's subject matter and his attitude toward it, giving reasons that may account for why the tone is as it is. Does the tone shift at any point in the text? If so, when and why do you think it shifts?

7. What did you learn from reading this book that you did not know before you read it? How has the book changed your perspective on the subject matter? Would you consider it an important book? Justify your response.

Reading all these questions in post, I realize how unconventional Freakonomics really is. The organization is all over the place, without a unifying theme or even point. Because there are two voices going into the piece (Dubner/Levitt), the tone is a little difficult to nail down, but overall leans towards witty but focused.

Purpose and argument--
This is how, in my mind (but partially supported by the introduction) Freakonomics came to be...
Levitt was a really quirky, 'brilliant' (he actually claims to know very little about economics, so I'm hesitant with 'brilliant'), and novel economist. He took a classically very narrow profession, widened the scope a bit, and ta-daa! People began paying attention. Then along came Dubner, and wrote a piece on him for the NY Times Magazine (note, the demographic of the magazine varies slightly from that of the actual newspaper), and people were very interested. So somebody told Levitt to write a book. And Levitt called Dubner, and they united. So, what to write the book on? They decided to take Levitt's quirky economist style and apply to a few quirky cases, and they had a book. Which was really just an analysis of some random things using economics (although creative economics).

Argument? Not really one present. I mean, I suppose you could disagree with Levitt's way of analyzing data, but then you'd be arguing with raw numbers (which don't lie). Also, the average reader is not going to question complicated economical tools and terms.

Overall, I found this book pretty unimportant. Yes, it was fun to read, and yes, it showed me some uncommon ways of thinking. However, I don't find it to reach much past entertainment.

What do you guys think?