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 "You've got to be careful if you don't know where you are going because you might not get there." - Yogi Berra

Tim Harford must have been oblivious to the aforementioned quote while writing 'The Logic of Life'. Problem with 'The Logic of Life' when compared to Harford's previous book 'The Undercover Economist' is the choice of topics. There should be no arguement as far as the flow of the books is concerned. Both the books have a common premise that there is more to world than we see. Both the books have a collection of disparate chapters that intend to validate the premise. Where 'The Undercover Economist' does it in riveting style, 'The Logic of Life' entangles itself in anecdotes, lengthy descriptions of characters and gross generalisations. Then there are chapters such as 'Is divorce underrated?' and 'A million years of logic' that state some pretty obvious and oft-repeated instances.

After having read Harford's 'The Undercover Economist', my expectations from 'The Logic of Life' were really high. However, as soon as I started to enjoy the book, Harford's appetite for played-out content fizzled out my enthusiasm. Harford very promisingly lays the framework for the rest of the book in the first chapter called 'Introducing the logic of life''. He argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, people are sufficiently rational enough than we often expect. He convincingly proves his theory through research-induced examples of prostitutes capitalising on the use and non-use of contraceptives and of criminals being alert to the trauma of imprisonment.

After breezing through the first chapter, I was looking forward to the rest of the book. However, contrary to my expectations, 'Las Vegas' and 'Is divorce underrated?' turned out to be mighty average chapters where in Harford harps on Game Theory and reasons for increase in divorce rates respectively. If author's choice of topics didn't bamboozle me enough, his bland explanations certainly did. There is nothing in these two chapters that can shake the readers out of the slumber induced by long-wiinded lectures on Von Neumann and Thomas Schelling. On the contrary, you might end up with hey-i-have-already-read-that-somewhere symptoms.

Next three chapters 'Why your boss is overpaid?', 'In the neighbourhood' and 'The dangers of rational racism' form the meaty part of this book. Harford's account on Tournament theory, Schelling's Chessboard model and statistical discriminations is both enlightening and thought-provoking. Out of last three chapters 'This world is spiky', 'Rational revolutions' and 'Million years of logic', only 'Rational revolutions' makes for a novel read. Unlike 'The Undercover Economist' which had me drooling over it, 'The Logic of Life' left me with mixed feelings. In the end, I'd say it's a mixed bag of a book. Buy the paperback version and before you buy, suspend your critical faculties and treat it as Tim Harford's first book.