Freaking out over 'Freakonomics'

I swore to myself that I wouldn’t do it. For the five days that I was recently on vacation in St. Augustine, Fla., I wouldn’t read a newspaper or magazine, website or blog, watch a TV news show, listen to news radio, check my Facebook page or even read a book remotely related to current events.

As a newspaper editor, I’m hyper-exposed to the news. I needed to take a break from the world, and for the most part, I was a good boy. But, news junkie that I am, I couldn’t help myself. A freaky book led me astray. What can I say? When it comes to the news, I am weak –– very weak.

Before you conclude that I’m a total current-events geek, though, let me say this: I had a marvelous vacation. My wife and I took the kids to St. Augustine to visit Grandma and Grandpa. We splashed in the 72-degree surf at the beach, toured the Whetstone chocolate factory, tooled around the Matanzas River in a replica pirate ship called the Black Raven, dined out a lot and played miniature golf. So there.

Two days into the vacation, however, I spotted “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” by Dr. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, carefully placed atop a pile of other books my mom had left on a side table in her living room, as if to test my fortitude.

No, I told myself. I would not read this book. But the juicy-looking green apple on its neon-bright front cover –– which was so shiny and perfect, as if straight from the Garden of Eden –– lured me in.

Just one chapter, I told myself. Just one chapter. And that was it. Within three days, I had read all 284 pages.

I had wanted to read “Freakonomics” for several years, but other texts got in the way. The book, first published in 2005, was followed in 2009 by “Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance,” and a “Freakonomics” documentary in 2010.

Levitt is a young, highly decorated economist who earned his bachelor’s from Harvard and his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is now a professor at the University of Chicago. Dubner is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker, and who has published “Turbulent Souls,” a national best-seller, and “Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper.”