The notion of “friends with benefits” is causing a severe decline in the prostitution industry. Convincing doctors to wash their hands because that would eradicate the number one cause of death in childbirth, the germs on doctors’ own hands, was a nearly impossible task because of ego. Television has had an impressive effect on the women of rural India: it has empowered them.

Building on the success of Freakonomics, authors Steve D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are at it again. By pooling their knowledge of microeconomics (Levitt) and skills in writing and journalism (Dubner), as well as calling on experts from a range of topics you wouldn’t quite believe exist, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance presents a collection of all the facts you never knew you wanted to know.

Freakonomics was illustrated with charts and graphs and armed readers with trivia that could jumpstart conversations at the dullest of dinner parties. SuperfFreakonomics takes it a step further. This collection was designed to resemble your middle school textbooks. Nearly every colorful page contains some picture, factoid, illustration or, of course, a table or graph. (How else would you explain economics besides tables and graphs?) In addition to making the book more visually entertaining than its predecessor, it also helps readers understand and remember more of the facts Levitt and Dubner painstakingly present.

In a chapter called “How is a Street Prostitute Like a Department Store Santa,” the title is pulled from all of two sentences of text and one illustration. It’s a great example of how SuperFreakonomics makes things memorable. Such a small amount of text, but by embedding a pictures of a team of Santa Clauses smack in the middle of a chapter on prostitution, how could you not remember the two sentences explaining the similarity? (The relationship between these two professions is intentionally omitted here. Why give a spoiler on a strange topic like that?)

While the authors present their work as economics, both Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics bear little resemblance to what many people will remember from their university days. By focusing on microeconomics, the study of market behavior of consumers and companies in an attempt to understand decision-making processes, Levitt and Dubner present more of a collection of pop-economic facts … the entertainment magazine of economics.

SuperFreakonomics is pretty much a guaranteed success, partially because of name recognition but also earned through a solid collection of studies and facts presented in an easy-to-read manner. However, the entertainment magazine comparison does indicate one drawback to this format of book. It is not the type of book you should sit down and read in a week. Rather, it’s meant to be savored, to sit on your coffee table and be enjoyed in small bites. Enjoyed in this way, each reader will be ready to jumpstart a whole new round of awkward dinner party conversations.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.