NOTE:
Thomas Sowell is the best free market American economist since Milton Friedman. I recommend his book: "The Vision of the Anointed", which deals with the unrestrained mindset that poisons the intellectual and political elites, who think they are smart enough to actually direct societies to produce a utopia.
This extremely positive review of a biography had far too many complements, and not any specific thoughts published by Sowell himself. I cut the review in half, and spent an hour finding the 10 best memes with Sowell quotes. Consider those 10 conservative memes to be an economics / social science 101 course -- great wisdom simply explained.
Ye Editor
"Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell
by Jason L Riley 304 pp,
ISBN-10 : 1541619684
(Basic Books 2021)
"Thomas Sowell is an American literary and philosophical icon -- a prolific genius who has graced us with his presence and his extraordinary essays, books and lectures for more than 50 years.
Consider that his career as a writer and public intellectual was delayed by a tumultuous youth and service in the Marines,
so he didn’t even get started on his life’s work as a remarkable economist, philosopher, social scientist until he was almost 30.
(The book) focuses on his literary and intellectual achievements, how others assessed his work and why he is a monument to effective intellectual inquiry
... Sowell is a master of economics, but also has become such a respected intellect because he has expanded his scholarship to intellectual history and social science using the University of Chicago economics empirical approach -- gather and analyze the pertinent evidence if you want to answer the questions.
Sowell benefits from the fact that economics provides important reliable information (evidence) about human behavior.
Economics provides good social science metrics.
... It is impossible for me to adequately describe Sowell’s achievements here, but the Riley biography is more than adequate, it is brilliant.
... Sowell’s wonderful story deserves a good biographer.
Sowell was the 5th child born of a widow in Gastonia, North Caroline in 1939, raised by his great aunt who moved to Harlem when Sowell was 9.
He was smart enough to be admitted to the academically very selective Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan (alma mater of 4 Nobel laureates) but dropped out after 1 year at age16 because of behavior problems – a bull headedness that would be a valuable characteristic in his adult life.
At that point he was also estranged from his great aunt, so he lived in homeless boys’ shelter and worked various jobs.
He became a Marine during the Korean war at age 21 as a pistol instructor, and completed high school, entered Howard University in DC after the war, grabbing an iron hold on academics, matriculating later at Harvard then Columbia and finally a PhD at University of Chicago.
His teaching career spanned the 1960s and 70s at Rutgers, Howard, Cornell, Brandeis, and a 10-year stint at UCLA from 1970 to 1980.
Since then, he has been at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, where he has been one of their most prolific, prominent and recognized fellows, writing books and columns but also making public appearances as an advocate or subject of interviews advocating his opinion on matters of policy and economics. ...
... The subjects that best summarize Sowell’s professional inquiries (include) ...
a deep dive into the ethnic/racial IQ debate as well as the mistake of affirmative action quotas in higher education and forced bussing in primary and secondary education while ignoring the decline of the education establishment into progressive nonsense
... Sowell’s concerns were to warn
of the tyranny of the power-hungry elites.
The idea itself is simple.
He already had determined that knowledge is radically dispersed among millions of human beings who are ignorant of others’ tiny fragments of knowledge.
Hayek criticized the enthusiasm for central economic planning, an incredibly stupid idea that reinforced the oligarchs’ sense that they should make the big decisions on economic matters, not the market itself.
This insanity was inherent to Marxist ideas and agendas that were spreading from the Soviet Union throughout Europe. Sowell captured the stupidity when he opened his book Knowledge and Decisions: “Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.”
Sowell provides a panoramic view of how the world works that will inform any careful reader’s thinking on just about everything.
Sowell’s many books on racial issues are focused on empirical analysis and not sloganeering and noisy rhetoric.
A student of Stigler and Freidman and influenced by Hayek, Sowell eschews rhetoric and focuses on what they always emphasized at University of Chicago -- the data, the evidence, empiric methods.
Related to the race and inequality issues as well as the discrimination against minorities around the world are his trilogy on migrations and migrant minorities
-- just another angle that strengthens his position as a level headed scientifically driven researcher who debunks bad ideas regularly and displays insights that are critical to intelligent analysis.
Sowell didn’t stop at discrimination, he provided an excellent analysis of the harmful effects of affirmative action and quota policies or special favoritism.
Just as a prize for reading Sowell you learn things you may never have known otherwise -- how Chinese Mainlander migrants to other countries have a remarkable record of achievement and prosperity.
Sowell shows that it’s the culture of the minority that determines success, and policies intended to provide social justice are sometimes poorly conceived and executed.
Sowell’s books on race and racial issues were written because he was obligated to weigh in, but I think Riley is right to emphasize the most important achievements of Sowell’s career -- his work on economics and the philosophy/history of ideas/politics/ and the influence of intellectuals.
The ideas he espouses on philosophy and economics and their intersection are all through his essays and books, but there is a trilogy that is foundational and make him the go-to guy on ideas and politics,
... Sowell is a go-to guy ... because he uses examples and plain talk that will elevate your thinking but not put you down.
Sowell believes that wisdom is all around us and he is, in practice and theory, very leery of intellectual pretensions, so he writes so that a truck driver can get it.
I liked that the first time I read him -- talk plain. If you can’t explain your theory to a bus driver, you don’t understand your theory ...
As an example of why Sowell is so interesting and readable, he asserts in his first book of a trilogy on Ideas that there are basically two types of people and two attitudes that result in two people similarly informed and well intentioned would always be on opposite sides.
It’s that fundamentally different visions of human nature divide people.
There is the “constrained” tragic vision that humans are imperfect and flawed and the “unconstrained” feel-good utopian vision that is based on the perfectibility of man and the victory of good intentions.
The politics and attitudes of people divide that way and are the motives we see in the American Constitution of 1787 as opposed to the French Constitution of 1793.
... The Vision of the Anointed, deals with the unrestrained mindset that poisons the intellectual and political elites, who think they are smart enough to actually direct societies to produce a utopia.
Sowell pulls no punches taking down the elites/oligarchs/ intellectuals and how they are tyrants in waiting.
... Sowell’s analyses of so many problems have been more lucid and cogent that most of the so-called public intellectuals in America -- and it’s because he is, first of all, a serious researcher and second a disciplined analyst.
Most of what he has said in the past 3 decades completely discredits the claims of current noisy and popular blowhards.
Decades ago Thomas Sowell was debunking stupid arguments now popular in all the popular progressive publications and media outlets.
... Read the brilliant biography by Mr. Riley."
Author John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D. is a physician
and non-practicing lawyer in Brownwood, Texas
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