The best expose of Japan's organized crime scene since Robert Whiting's "Tokyo Underworld." Former Yomiuri Shimbun journalist Jake Adelstein takes readers on a gripping tour of his 12-year stint on the Tokyo police beat and into a dark world closed to most non-Japanese. Part Philip Marlowe and part Clark Kent, the bilingual American succeeds in uncovering the activities of some of the city's more notorious yakuza gangsters, with crimes ranging from extortion to human trafficking and murder. Not for the fainthearted, this outstanding debut is a must-read for anyone wanting to get the real scoop on Japan's secret criminal society.
SUPERFREAKONOMICS, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. William Morrow, 288 pp., $29.99 (hardcover)
The dismal science of economics has rarely been more entertaining than it was in the international best-seller "Freakonomics," which applied orthodox analytical tools to make some startling conclusions about everyone from sumo wrestlers to the Ku Klux Klan. Four years later, the same authors return with a similar work that, while lacking the surprise factor of the original, nevertheless again succeeds in making economics more sexy than a J-curve. While their research on topics ranging from global warming, suicide bombers and prostitutes likely will provoke much debate, this is another entertaining read that is more funny than freaky.