of fabri- cation, self-interest, and convenience. Why experts routinely make up statistics; the invention of chronic hali- tosis . . . How to ask a good question . . . Sudhir Venkateshs long, strange trip into the crack den . . . Life is a tournament . . . Why prostitutes earn more than architects . . . What a drug dealer, a high-school quarterback, and an editorial assistant have in common . . . How the invention of crack cocaine mirrored the invention of nylon stockings . . . Was crack the worst thing to hit black Americans since Jim Crow?     4. Where Have All the Criminals Gone? 117 In which the facts of crime are sorted out from the fictions. What Nicolae Ceau¸sescu learned-the hard way-about abortion . . .     iii Co n t e n t s     Why the 1960s were a great time to be a criminal . . . Think the roaring 1990s economy put a crimp on crime? Think again . . . Why capital pun- ishment doesnt deter criminals . . . Do police actually lower crime rates? . . . Prisons, prisons everywhere . . . Seeing through the New York City po- lice "miracle" . . . What is a gun, really? . . . Why early crack dealers were like Microsoft millionaires and later crack dealers were like Pets.com . . . The superpredator versus the senior citizen . . . Jane Roe, crime stopper: how the legalization of abortion changed everything.     5. What Makes a Perfect Parent? 147 In which we ask, from a variety of angles, a pressing question: do par- ents really matter? The conversion of parenting from an art to a science . . . Why parenting experts like to scare parents to death . . . Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? . . . The economics of fear . . . Obsessive parents and the nature-nurture quagmire . . . Why a good school isnt as good as you might