Who's sufficiently nerdy to want to wait in line at 12:01 am at the Arlington Barnes & Noble on July 15/16? It might be fun if there's a group doing it, otherwise I'll order on Amazon. E-mail me.

The book's authors, Dubner and Levitt have a great new New York Times Magazine column, which I look forward to reading in its monthly incarnation. (And there's also a blog, which is a tad inconsistent.)

But I was disappointed by the book itself. Not so much the book qua book, but if you had read the excellent 2003 Dubner New York Times Magazine article on Levitt, the book doesn't add that much to your life, a problem that's doubled for me because I regularly read Tyler Cowen's excellent blog, which anticipates many of the same issues. Too, it's discouraging to see so much padding of a slim 242-page book (the last 35 of which are the endnotes and index) by use of a large font, leading, and white space. Still, if you haven't read the magazine article, and you're not familiar with Levitt's fascinating work, the book is worthwhile, and I'm encouraged by the success of the book. The book's chapter on the economics and structure of the crack market was especially interesting: street-level crack dealers are making close to minimum wage at huge risk of death or imprisonment, but they do so because of the tournament possibility of moving up in the organization and making all of a low-six-digit salary at the head of a highly leveraged pyramid. It makes the exploitation complaints of law firm associates look petty.