theperksofbeingabooklover’s Reviews > Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything > Status Update

"For black Americans, the four decades between World War II and the Crack boom had been marked by steady and often dramatic improvement. By 1980s, virtually every facet of life was improving for black Americans, and the progress showed no sign of stopping. Then came crack."

"Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists."

"It was John Kenneth Galbraith, the hyperliterate economic sage who coined the phrase "conventional wisdom". He did not consider it a compliment."

"..a doctor may have the same economic incentives as a car salesman or a funeral director or a mutual fund manager..."

"Information is the currency of the Internet".

"...relative to the size of the black population, lynchings were exceedingly rare...one lynching is too many...but by the turn of the century, lynchings were hardly the everyday occurrence that they are remembered as."

"...there were actually more lynchings of blacks between 1900 and 1909, when the clan was dormant, than during the 1920s, when the Klan had millions of members-- which suggests that the Klu Klux Klan carried out far fewer lynchings than is generally thought".