FREAKONOMICS By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Allen Lane Price: £20 Pages: 242

The book should have come with a statutory warning: "Reading it could be harmful to your conventional wisdom." Sample some of the questions the authors ask. Which is more dangerous for children: a swimming pool or a gun? What could curb crime more: tougher criminal laws or easier abortion laws? What matters more for your child's future-what you are as a parent or what you do as a parent? To put it more outrageously, do parents matter? What's the safer way to travel: by air or by car? Which of the two is a bigger killer: terrorist attack or French fries?

Through such simple, but often unasked, questions Steven Levitt, one of America's most brilliant young economists, and Stephen Dubner, a journalist with The New York Times, approach some commonly held notions. Their answers are illuminating and the process of arriving at them interesting.

Consider, for instance, the authors' comparison of the invention of crack cocaine to the invention of nylon stockings. Until DuPont introduced nylon in the late 1930s, stockings were made of silk-delicate, expensive and out of reach of the middle class. Nylon stockings brought class to the masses-an unarguably positive development. Crack cocaine did exactly the same to drug users. Invented in the 1980s as a substantially cheaper version of the class drug cocaine, crack cocaine was readily greeted by the masses-an unarguably negative development.

Similarly, over-indulgent parents are compared to politicians to drive home some points on parenting. There is an increasing belief that money determines the outcome of elections more than many other factors. Election results will also show that usually the candidate who spends more money in campaigning wins. But is money the cause of victory? The answer is no. The money you spend on your voters (children) can't win you elections (can't improve your parenting) if you are not liked by your voters (children) for what you are. What matters decisively for parents and politicians is what they are, rather than what they do or how much they spend.

The book doesn't arrive at conclusions merely through authors' intuition. Behind every conclusion are neatly analysed facts and empirical evidences. The analysis of nearly 1,000 US Congressional races since 1972 shows that a winning candidate could have cut his spending by half and lose only 1 per cent of the vote, and a losing candidate could have doubled his spending without losing more than 1 per cent of votes. As for parenting, the book, among other things, presents 16 factors that make a child do better-or worse-in school. It is the knack for such data crunching that help Levitt prove with numbers that legalising abortion is the most effective way to curb crime-more effective than better policing, stringent punishment or even lower unemployment. Reason: a ban on abortion leads to unwanted children who are often uncared for and vulnerable to become anti-social.

At best, Freakonomics will turn the reader into a sceptic who will question a lot more than he did before. At worst, it will provide enough cocktail party ammunition to make even the most intellectually detached person a trivia-spouting maniac.

THE MAHABHARATA By Meera Uberoi Penguin Price: Rs 300 Pages: 472

The latest on the growing list of paperback epics, Uberoi's book is a condensed version of the story of the Kuru princes. But still she packs enough details and dialogues to make it a pacy read.

S.T.R.I.P.T.E.A.S.E: THE ART OF CORPORATE WARFARE By Mukul Deva Viking Price: Rs 325 Pages: 200

The book brings military strategies to the marketplace. In the age of corporate warfare and boardroom battles, Sun Tzu and the Battle of Waterloo can provide some useful guidelines.

RASA YATRA By Mallikarjun Mansur Translated by Rajshekhar Mansur Roli Price: Rs 295 Pages: 144

This is a record of a journey in music-how a small-town boy from Karnataka became one of the maestros of Hindustani music. Mallikarjun's son Rajshekhar fills in the last years of his life.