That’s putting it mildly. It was not only themeless but seemingly pointless.

There is, quite frankly, not much to review.

The book does contain an interesting story about a sociology student who goes into the housing projects of a major city and winds up spending a lot of time with drug-dealing gangs. And maybe that’s enough to justify reading the book as a whole.

Show Me the Beef or Something?

But other than those 20 pages or so, what attracts people to this book? No idea. Please write if you know!

Or maybe it’s the fun title that makes this book appealing. No doubt it’s catchy.

Whatever the case, Freakonomics does at least demonstrate that good marketing — which, apparently, this book enjoys — can make up for a lack of, umm, "unifying theme."

S.E. Harrison is the author of “Plutonomics: A Unified Theory of Wealth.” (http://plutonomics.wordpress.com/).