Who thought that Economics and History could be so Interesting?

As one who dreaded the social exam, and avoided History-Geography-Economics-Civics textbooks like plague, I never thought I'd find myself reading a book on Economics with anything approaching interest, especially after trying "The Wealth of Nations " by Adam Smith, to fulfill a perceived intellectual lacking, and plodding through after about 50 pages before giving up utterly.

"Freakonomics" though is nothing like your average, dry , boring textbook. Its actually rather interesting... though if your looking for a solution to deep and profound questions like an answer to Thirld World poverty, or ways of closing the income gap betwwen the rich and poor, you may want to look elsewhere. It asks a lot of interesting questions though and disproves many notions that people take for granted... it doesn't provide too many answers though... vindicates the "Butterfy effect" perhaps... that the strangest events have a completely unexpected effect somewhere else.

The other book that proved to be an unexpectedly good read was Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Almost Everything" ... or maybe that isn't that surprising. Parts of it are not unlike Stehen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time" (Even the titles are simiar' ... but its been written with a really nice sense of humour... and its not so much an explanation of why things are the way they are... but how we found out that they are the way they are... and don't let "History" scare you off... its more like a History of Science really. It takes us up close and personal with the lives and eccentricities of the great ( and not so great) men whose work led us knowing what we do about the world ... humanizing them , giving you the feeling that the author actually knew them... and it also mentions several unsung heroes of Science ... those whose work had been plagiarised or attributed to someone else... or who had simply been forgotten until the world was ready for their ideas.