Book Log 2010 #47: The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming

A man moves to New York after being raised out West, and as he tries to adjust to his new life digging the tunnels for the New York subway he meets a woman who claims that she is the daughter of the King of Ohio, a country formed by a French nobleman who saw that the coming revolution in his own country would cost him his position.

What comes of this is an intriguing mix of history and science fiction, as the duo try to put together what's actually happened while meeting with (and trying to avoid, at times) figures like Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and J. P. Morgan.

The book is actually partially set in the present day, as an older man with a vested interest in the story tells about his life and work to gather information on the kingdom. It doesn't take long to sort out how the parts are connected, though the modern sections are fairly coy about it for a while.

It's not quite an alternative history, and it doesn't quite lie squarely in the historical fiction or sci-fi camps, either, but it's a good read if you don't mind a little genre-bending.

Book Log 2010 #46: Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

I'm pretty sure I'm the last person in America to read this book, which was all the rage when it came out in 2005. Its chapters look at various issues with the idea that decisions people make on them are guided by whatever gives the maximum incentive to act (for example, what incentives exists that would lead to teachers cheating to improve the standardized test scores of their students). For all issues, Levitt (a University of Chicago economist) looks to ask the right question and then use data rather than theory to find answers.

As someone who has bailed out of several books that try to explain economics to laypeople, I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by the approach taken here. Levitt's method makes more sense to me than the usual onslaught of curves, as I think using quantitative data leads to results that, while unexpected, have a foundation in the real world. Having Dubner, a journalist for the New York Times, as a co-author helps to make the prose that much more approachable.

There is controversy here - one chapter delves into the question of a relationship between legalized abortion and crime - and the approach may strike some with a better grip of economics as being too popular. But for me, this is easily the most approachable book on economics that I've ever read. I expect to get around to SuperFreakonomics much sooner than I did the original.