2001 issue of The Journal of Law and Economics had not been peer-reviewed, alleged that Lott had paid the University of Chicago Press to publish the papers, and that papers with results opposite of Lott's had been blocked from publication in that issue. A federal judge found that Levitt's replication claim in Freakonomics was not defamation but found merit in Lott's complaint about the email claims. Levitt settled the second defamation claim by admitting in a letter to McCall that he himself was a peer reviewer in the 2001 issue of The Journal of Law and Economics, that Lott had not engaged in bribery (paying for extra costs of printing and postage for a conference issue is customary), and that he knew that "scholars with varying opinions" (including Levitt himself) had been invited to participate. The Chronicle of Higher Education characterized Levitt's letter as offering "a doozy of a concession". The dismissal of the first half of Lott's suit was unanimously upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on February 11, 2009. Publishing history Freakonomics peaked at number two among nonfiction on The New York Times Best Seller list and was named the 2006 Book Sense Book of the Year in the Adult Nonfiction category. The book received positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 67 out of 100, based on 16 reviews. The success of the book has been partly attributed to the blogosphere. In the campaign prior to the release of the book in April 2005, publisher (William Morrow and Company) chose to target bloggers in an unusually strategic way, sending galley copies to over a hundred of them, as well as contracting two specialized buzz marketing agencies. In 2006, the Revised and Expanded Edition of the book was published, with the most significant corrections in the second chapter. Progression Freakonomics blog The authors started their own Freakonomics blog in 2005. In May 2007, writer and blogger Melissa Lafsky was hired as the full-time editor of the site. In August 2007, the blog was incorporated into The New York Times web site – the authors had been writing joint columns for The New York Times Magazine since 2004 – and the domain Freakonomics.com became a redirect there. In March 2008, Annika Mengisen replaced Lafsky as the blog editor. The Freakonomics blog ended its association