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September 24, 2007
 Stephen Dubner, co-author of the international bestseller Freakonomics, will be the featured speaker for the 2007 Morningside College Peter Waitt Lecture to be held at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 16, in Eppley Auditorium, 3625 Garretson Avenue. The public is invited to attend this event free of charge. This event is also sponsored by Morningside's Academic and Cultural Arts Series (ACAS).
Published in May 2005, Freakonomics first topped the sales charts in the United States before moving on to the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Brazil, and Singapore. Freakonomics won the inaugural Quill Award for best business book; was short-listed for the inaugural Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book Award; received a Visionary Award from the National Council on Economic Education; is a BookSense Book of the Year; and was named a Notable Book of 2005 by the New York Times.
Dubner and his co-author, the University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, have appeared widely on television and are now regular contributors to ABC News, appearing monthly on Good Morning America and a segment of World News Tonight called “Freakonomics Friday.” They also write a monthly Freakonomics column in The New York Times Magazine and maintain a popular Web site.
 Dubner shows how economics is, at root, the study of incentives, “that is, how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.” Freakonomics is primarily based on the research of Steven Levitt, whom Dubner originally profiled for The New York Times Magazine.
Dubner is an award-winning journalist who spent several years at the Times, and has also written for The New Yorker magazine, Time magazine, and elsewhere. His journalism has been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Crime Writing. He is the author of two previous best-selling books, Turbulent Souls and Confessions of a Hero-Worshipper, as well as a forthcoming children’s book.
He has been writing since he was a child; his first published work appeared in Highlights magazine. During college, he started a rock band that was signed to Arista Records. But he quit playing music to attend graduate school at Columbia University, where he also taught in the English Department. He still lives in New York with his wife, a former war photographer, and their two children.
The Peter Waitt Lecture was established in 1997 by Norman Waitt Jr. in recognition of the contributions of his uncle Peter Waitt as an entrepreneur, businessman, and community leader, and to provide quality speakers for students of business and the community. The lecture is endowed by The Kind World Foundation.
Previous Waitt Lecturers have included: Lech Walesa, Dr. Oscar Arias, Jane Bryant Quinn, Richard Belluzzo, Howard Putnam, Neil Cavuto, Robin Roberts, and Thomas Friedman.
For more information, contact Cathee Phillips, director of external relations at Morningside College, at (712) 274-5512.
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