I too immediately thought of Freakanomics and Malcolm Gladwell, as well as Thomas Friedman. There seems to be a trend of writing books around "anecdata", as th

I too immediately thought of Freakanomics and Malcolm Gladwell, as well as Thomas Friedman. There seems to be a trend of writing books around "anecdata", as the OP calls it - anecdotes presented as patterns, while failing to account for selection bias in the process. Of course, there's probably an irony in the fact that I drew a trend from merely four anecdotes as well...