Ann Marlowe

BY ANN MARLOWE

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. William Morrow, 242 pages. $25.95.

Freakonomics is the latest in a recent genre of nonfiction book that explains in non-stick prose how the world really works, popularizing a science or scientific insight while forever hitting the reader on the head with how damnably clever the author is. It’s the Malcolm Gladwell syndrome, signaled by a Gladwell blurb on the cover of Freakonomics stating that Steven D. Levitt has “the most interesting mind in America”-and by a peculiar typo in the publicity materials for the book referring to “Mr. Gladwell” as the author, rather than Mr. Levitt and his collaborator, Stephen J. Dubner. If you are, say, in the camp of Richard Posner in suspecting that Mr. Gladwell wouldn’t have the faintest idea of what an interesting mind is (see Mr. Posner’s elegant takedown of Blink in the Jan. 24 issue of The New Republic), this might put you off Freakonomics entirely.That would be too bad. It’s a sloppily organized group of essays on completely unrelated topics, but it’s entertaining despite its strenuous efforts to be so. And Freakonomics may be worth the cover price in our real-estate-mad city just for matching up the adjectives in real-estate ads with higher or lower sales prices. Who knew that “granite” is correlated with higher prices and “charming” with lower? Sadly, the original research isn’t cited. (more…)

BY ANN MARLOWE

“But you don’t look American.” “Where are you really from?” “Where were your parents born?” I’ve heard this overseas, both in Europe and in places like Afghanistan and India, and I’ve heard it here in New York, but only from visitors. My black hair, dark brown eyes and olive skin reflect my Jewish ancestry, but presumably some of the people asking these questions are familiar with the existence of Jewish Americans, not to mention Hispanic and Italian-Americans.

“They ask if I’m Italian in France and French in Spain and Spanish in Italy,” I complained once to a Jewish American friend.”They’re really asking if you’re Jewish,” she replied. “Take it from me. I grew up going to resorts all over Europe, and when they say that, they’re just too polite to come out and ask you.”

Of course, such delicacy argues that the trait being queried is seen as a stigma. But these questions annoy me for another reason. My family has been in the U.S. long enough to have won decorations in three American wars and have roads and factories with our name on them. We are no more and no less American than any other late-19th- or early-20th-century immigrants. (more…)

BY ANN MARLOWE

ONE Thanksgiving dinner in the early ’70s, my father an nounced to our suburban New Jersey family that he would no longer subscribe to The New York Times. He was sick and tired of its implicit endorsement of urban rioters, spoiled-brat campus peaceniks and welfare cheats. At the time I was barely a teenager, with only the dimmest idea of what bias in a newspaper might be, but I noticed that the grownups at the table, whether left, right or center, obviously thought my dad was a crank for bringing it up.

How times have changed – and maybe even the Times. In last Sunday’s paper, so-called public editor Daniel Okrent assessed the Times’ use of anonymous sources, scarcely down from 51 percent to 47 percent of all stories – and this a year after management urged reporters to reduce such sources, with guidelines that asked reporters to explain why sources are anonymous, and indicate their possible motivations. He also noted that the paper will soon offer its staff suggestions on “sourcing, bias, the division between news and opinion and communication with readers,” in a document titled “Preserving our readers’ trust.” (more…)