Freakish Economists

The title and the hype can certainly be misleading, but that doesn't mean a popular book can't be enjoyable. If you ignore the facts that the economy, in the most common meaning, is never mentioned and that the whole thing reads like a shrine to Levitt, then "Freakonomics" will keep you some good company.
Although the writers (mainly Levitt I guess) try to present this as a book with no unifying theme, it is really about how the methods used by economists can bring results in different areas of our lives. Of course, there is no grand analysis and nothing that intimately connects the few chapters/examples of this theme. This lack of complexity and the addressing of familiar topics do explain the book's great sales.
Some specifics about what the book covers are incentives and their role on people's decisions, and statistical analysis. You will contemplate on the different kind of incentives people may have (moral, social, economic) and which are the strongest in a given situation. A smart thing to do when you want to predict the crowd's behaviour. You will also see how statistical analysis can be a detective's best friend when the investigation is about teachers cheating or sumo-fight frauds.
It may be that some of the content borders on the trivial, but Levitt's casual and witty writing style makes you forget about it. Clearly, this is not a life-changing book, but it deals with an interesting topic in a not challenging way and that can only be fun.