Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner - Freakonomics

Chapter 6: PERFECT PARENTING, PART II; OR: WOULD A ROSHANDA BY ANY OTHER NAME SMELL AS SWEET?

Obsessive or not, any parent wants to believe that she is making a big difference in the kind of person her child turns out to be. Otherwise, why bother?
The belief in parental power is manifest in the first official act a parent commits: giving the baby a name. As any modern parent knows, the baby-naming industry is booming, as evidenced by a proliferation of books, websites, and baby-name consultants. Many parents seem to believe that a child cannot prosper unless it is hitched to the right name; names are seen to carry great aesthetic or even predictive powers.
This might explain why, in 1958, a New York City man named Robert Lane decided to call his baby son Winner. The Lanes, who lived in a housing project in Harlem, already had several children, each with a fairly typical name. But this boy - well, Rober Lane apparently had a special feeling about this one. Winner Lane: how could he fail with a name like that?
Three years later, the Lanes had another baby boy, their seventh and last child. For reasons that no one can quite pin down today, Robert decided to name this boy Loser. It doesn't appear that Robert was unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the name's bookend effect. First a Winner, now a Loser. But if Winner Lane could hardly be expected to fail, could Loser Lane possibly succeed?

Záměrně sem dávám i název kapitoly (ukázka je prvních několik odstavců), hezky ilustruje styl celé knihy. Typický zástupce literatury, které říkám spotřební, tj. přečti a užij si a pak klidně zapomeň, čtu podobné hlavně pro zážitek z četby a neberu je tolik vážně. Tahle konkrétní vás zasekne drápkem hned ze začátku, zprostředkuje vám spoustu amerických reálií, o jejichž existenci jste neměli tušení (baby-name consultants?), v souvislostech, o nichž netuší ani sami domorodci. Nejzajímavější je podle mého kapitola o účetnictví drogového gangu, ale z té jsem nechtěla dát ukázku, abyste nepřišli o překvapení.

Málem bych zapomněla - česky vyšla pod otřesným názvem Špekonomie (ještě jednou se otřásám).