Life is logical, it's rational to be lazy

[matgb]

Tim Harford simply rocks. One of my three choices for best book I read last year was his Undercover Economist. He's currently on a major tour plugging his follow-up, The Logic Of Life. Which includes appearing on The Colbert Report:

I keep meaning to write it up, I've been promising a few people a post on markets and why they're important for ages, just haven't actually done it. You'd be better of reading his book anyway. If you want a more sane but long reason, he's on Authors@Google as well:

Logic of Life is heading rapidly up my wants list, paperback is out in a week or so, yay!

Comments

[matgb]

Possibly, it's actually a book I've not read yet, in one of those can't-quite-explain-why weirdnesses. Have you read it? Everyone says it's good but I just haven't picked it up yet...

[jackthomas.livejournal.com]

It's better than the Undercover Economist, but different.

[matgb]

So I've heard. I think Economist is more of an intro primer, which is partially why I bought it as I needed some basic explanations when talking to people.

Freakonics is a bit more interesting in terms of cool, I guess. So I'll have to buy a copy.

[springhazsprung.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read it about a year ago, very interesting and worth reading... this other book sounds quite similar, with the addressing topics which you wouldn't usually associate with economics. It's all quite light-hearted and fun to read, but with some quite interesting theories and stuff. I would be interested to read another book like Freakonomics that has similarly interesting topics.

[matgb]

Economist is basically a good primer on economics, I wanted tor ead it because while I 'get' how markets etc work, I've not had formal training in it really and thus find it hard to explain.

Logic is from what I can see more in the Freakonomics vein, it has stuff like why people do/don't marry depending on local circumstances, why women are more likely to want to go to university/move to the city, etc.

But like I said, not read that yet. I'll get Freakonoics soon, it's not been bought simply because it's not been bought, it'll happen.

I like daft examples and parallels when explaining stuff-Economist opens with a large section on coffee shops and Rents, effectively using Ricardo to explain the cost of coffee in Waterloo station.