When to Rob a Bank is the latest book from the Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the famous Freakonomics pair and it’s a collection of their best blog posts.
I’m liking
I loved Freakonomics and their other books, and read their blog from time to time. This book is a good read if you like to pick up a book, select a random chapter and read a couple of pages at a time. There’s some fascinating stories in there and if you’ve never read their blog, it’s a great way to see their highlights reel.
Things that made me go hmmmm
This is nothing like their other books and I could not actually finish this one, I was disappointed since I loved their other books. I prefer to read non-fiction which has an over-arching theme and builds a thesis throughout. This one had none of that and it was not easy to read from cover to cover as each short chapter was a completely different topic and often even a different writing style. Some were great, some were boring or weird and I have no idea why they included them in the book. The blog posts are all available for free on their website, it’s simply packaged up for those who aren’t into reading blogs.
The conclusion
I’d give this one a miss, unless you are a read grazer of books and aren’t interested in reading something from cover to cover, and have never read their blog.
