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Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell Hardcover – May 25, 2021
by Jason L Riley (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars 1,565 ratings
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A biography of Thomas Sowell, one of America's most influential conservative thinkers. Thomas Sowell is one of the great social theorists of our age. In a career spanning more than a half century, he has written over thirty books, covering topics from economic history and social inequality to political theory, race, and culture. His bold and unsentimental assaults on liberal orthodoxy have endeared him to many readers but have also enraged fellow intellectuals, the civil-rights establishment, and much of the mainstream media. The result has been a lack of acknowledgment of his scholarship among critics who prioritize political correctness. In the first-ever biography of Sowell, Jason L. Riley gives this iconic thinker his due and responds to the detractors. Maverick showcases Sowell's most significant writings and traces the life events that shaped his ideas and resulted in a Black orphan from the Jim Crow South becoming one of our foremost public intellectuals.
304 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Fascinating… Riley has achieved something rare in the field of intellectual biography — a recounting of a distinguished scholar’s life that draws on popular interest in Thomas Sowell the person and directs it to a lucid survey of Sowell’s voluminous intellectual output.”―National Review
“Sowell’s vast and diverse intellectual output, devoured over the decades by a loyal readership, screamed for a biography a long time ago. Jason Riley delivers, in a pleasing style that arrives as a must-read for any fan of Thomas Sowell, what the public so wanted but inexplicably did not receive until now.”―American Spectator
“Riley’s presentation of Sowell and his ideas is particularly important because it comes at a time when the Republican Party stresses its interest in reaching out to working-class and non-white voters. Sowell is one of the most influential black conservatives of the past 100 years.”―Daily Caller
“Riley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, has done an admirable job distilling Sowell’s 90 years, 30-odd books, and countless columns into a single volume. Maverick will delight Sowell’s biggest fans and help introduce new generations to the man and his work.”―Washington Free Beacon
“An idea-centered life of the noted economist and political commentator. . . . This will be valuable to students of economics, Black conservatism, and public policy.”
―Kirkus
“Thomas Sowell is among the most brilliant thinkers in the world today—deep, original, creative, fearless, intimidatingly erudite. His gripping and improbable life story can only magnify one’s awe at this astonishing man’s accomplishments.”―Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of How the Mind Works and Enlightenment Now
“Maverick is a brilliant intellectual biography of one of the most important thinkers of our time. Jason Riley writes lucidly and engagingly, illuminating ideas of Sowell’s that are more timely today than ever, dispelling many myths along the way.”
―Amy Chua, Yale Law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations
“Enlightened opinion has it that the views of conservative black thinkers are boilerplate canards dismissible with a few statistics. Enlightened opinion is also uninformed by — and quite dismissible in the light of — the life's work of Thomas Sowell. At last a biography that shows how and why.”
―John McWhorter, Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University, Contributing Editor at the Atlantic, and Host of Slate's Lexicon Valley
“With the publication of “Maverick,” Jason Riley has rendered an enormous service by providing a compelling, informed and elegant intellectual biography of the great Thomas Sowell. It was obviously a labor of love. As a professional economist and Windy City native, I especially appreciated Riley's nuanced, deeply researched account of Sowell's roots in the Chicago School of economic thought, as it was led by Milton Friedman and George Stigler in the 1950s and 1960s.”―Glenn Loury, Professor of Economics, Brown University
“There are two important ambitions at work in this book. The first gives historical context to Thomas Sowell’s extraordinary genius. The second shows how his work spawned a new, post-60s conservative consciousness in black America. It looks with openness and courage at the often-awkward encounter between conservatism and racial conflicts. But most of all, this is the inspiring story of one of the greatest American thinkers who has ever lived.”
―Shelby Steele, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Shame
About the Author
Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of several previous books, including Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed.
Product details
Publisher : Basic Books (May 25, 2021)
Language : English
Hardcover : 304 pages
4.9 out of 5 stars 1,565 ratings
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Jason L Riley
Jason Riley is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he has written about politics, economics, education, immigration and social inequality for more than 20 years. He’s also a frequent public speaker and provides commentary for television and radio news outlets.
After joining the Journal in 1994, Mr. Riley was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000 and a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. He joined the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank focused on urban affairs, in 2015.
Mr. Riley is the author of four books: Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders (2008); Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (2014); False Black Power? (2017); and the forthcoming Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell (May 2021).
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4.9 out of 5 stars
Sydney Williams
5.0 out of 5 stars As much a biography, this is a treatise on intellectual thought.Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2021
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Sydney M. Williams
“Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell,” Jason L. Riley
October 10, 2021
“The kind of idealized unity, projected by political leaders and
intellectuals, has seldom existed among any racial and minority
anywhere. Nor has the economic progress of racial or ethnic groups
been much correlated with their closeness to, or remoteness from, such unity.”
Thomas Sowell (1930-)
As quoted by Jason Riley in Maverick
Thomas Sowell was born into rural poverty in North Carolina in 1930. His father died before he was born and his mother a few years later, giving birth to a younger brother. With an aunt, he moved to Harlem. Two years after being admitted to New York’s Stuyvesant High School he dropped out. At eighteen he joined the Marines. After his service he acquired his GED and entered Howard University. Following freshman year, he transferred to Harvard. He earned a masters at Columbia and a PhD in economics at the University of Chicago. After giving up teaching at age fifty, he has spent the last forty-one years at the Hoover Institute. He has written at least thirty books on subjects ranging from economics, race, education, to politics and intellectual thought. It has been his intense research and life-long pursuit of facts, which usually produce conclusions that do not conform to what is expected of a black American male.
The author, Jason Riley, was born in Buffalo, New York in 1971. He graduated from State University of New York in Buffalo in 1993. After stints at Buffalo News and USA Today, he joined The Wall Street Journal in 1994. In 2005, he joined the editorial board and since 2016 has had a weekly op-ed column. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. With this biography, he has authored four books, including Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (2014), a book Thomas Sowell applauded.
In this, Riley spends little time on Sowell’s personal history, relying on his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, published in 2000 (and written up by me in August 2020.) “The goal,” Jason Riley wrote in his introduction, “…is to place what he and others consider his (Sowell’s) most important observations into context, and then trace the intellectual traditions from which those insights derive and the orthodoxy they often challenge.” While Thomas Sowell is an economist – his PhD thesis was an analysis of Say’s Law – his interests extend far beyond economics. While studying under Milton Friedman and George Stigler at the University of Chicago, he remained a Marxist, but that changed in 1960 when he became an intern at the U.S. Department of Labor, studying Puerto Rico’s unemployment in the sugar industry. A study of the data convinced him that the cause for unemployment was due to a mandated minimum wage.
The book, which is 248 readable pages, is divided into nine chapters, with titles like “Higher Education, Lower Expectations,” Sowell’s Knowledge,” “Civil Rights and Wrongs,” and “Culture Matters.” Sowell is an intellectual and empiricist. Riley quotes from the preface to Sowell’s book Race and Culture: “…what is most needed is an understanding of existing realities, the history from which the present evolved, and the enduring principles constraining our options for the future.” It is the reliance on empiricism, rationalism and skepticism that has always distinguished Thomas Sowell, whether he is writing on economics, race, education or culture. For example, in an essay written in 2000, “Success Concealing Failure,” when U.S. universities bragged that Americans win more Nobel prizes than any other nation, Sowell pointed out an unpleasant truth: “While Americans won the lion’s share of Nobel Prizes in 1999, not one of these winners was actually born in the United States.”
Riley points out Sowell’s belief that well-intentioned people (“useful idiots,” as Lenin described them) strive to help blacks and other minorities. Yet the results, as both Sowell and Riley have noted, are often the opposite of what was intended. Sowell says it is unclear whether Civil Rights leaders’ and politicians’ intentions are unintended, as both groups have built careers on the concept that blacks can only succeed with the help of programs like Affirmative Action – a policy Sowell finds insulting to the millions of individual blacks who succeeded without assistance. If it were true, how does one explain the success of Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., a black-only high school, where black students out-scored white students in segregated schools in the 1950s? School success is a function of ability and effort on part of the student and insistence on learning on part of the teacher. Can a gifted black youngster in the nation’s capital today receive as good a high school education as one could sixty-five years ago?
Sowell is concerned about current trends toward wokeism. In an essay, “Lessons not Learned” published twenty years ago, he wrote, “…we and our children are being trained to be sheep and to respond automatically to words that strike an emotional chord…The very tactics of those totalitarian movements – intimidation, demonization and disregard of all rules in favor of politically defined results – have become hallmarks of political correctness today.” And political correctness has become more ubiquitous over the past two decades.
While this is not a biography in the traditional sense, Jason Riley enters the mind of a man about whom Steven Pinker once wrote, “…is one of the most brilliant thinkers in the world today.” Like most black conservatives, Sowell is denigrated by much of mainstream media and progressive politicians because the conclusions he reaches do not accord with those who feel that all blacks should speak with one voice. Riley’s contribution is to better understand this man, and that it is the individual – not the gender, tribe or race – that is important. We are not born equal. We do not have equal abilities or aspirations, but our Constitution provides for equal rights and equal protection under the law. We must strive for inclusion, diversity of ideas and equal opportunities; but equal outcomes are dreams of the naïve, which deceitfully serve only those who seek power. Ironically, and perhaps counter-intuitively, Sowell has greater confidence in the innate ability of blacks than do many of those who claim to help them. “Sowell wants to make his readers smarter, not tell them what to do,” Riley writes.
Maverick is an important book. It illuminates a brilliant thinker; it explains why current, perhaps well-intentioned, but racially discriminatory policies, like critical race theory, hurt those they are supposed to help, and it describes a man who rose to prominence, despite enormous odds, based on his abilities and his willingness to follow where his knowledge and research led, regardless of what public opinion might say.
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Bill Powers
5.0 out of 5 stars Jason Riley Becomes a New and Powerful Voice in Conservative America!Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2021
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This is the third Jason Riley book that I have read. The first “Please Stop Helping Us”, followed by “False Black Power?” and now “Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell”. I have enjoyed all three, but with Maverick, Riley has clearly staked his claim as a major serious thinker among black conservatives. I also follow Riley’s Opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal and highly recommend them.
Maverick focus more on Sowell’s evolution as an economist and how he has applied economic analysis to issues related to race, not only in the United States, but globally.
• “Intellectuals have romanticized cultures that have left people mired in poverty, ignorance, violence, disease and chaos, while trashing cultures that have led the world in prosperity, education, medical advances and law and order,” he wrote in Intellectuals and Society.”
• “They have encouraged the poor to believe their poverty is caused by the rich—a message which may be a passing annoyance to the rich but a lasting handicap to the poor, who may see less need to make fundamental changes to their own lives that could lift themselves up, instead of focusing their efforts on dragging others down.”
• “The black community has long been plagued by spellbinding orators who know how to turn the hopes and fears of others into dollars and cents for themselves.” Here, Sowell was speaking not only as a scholar but also from personal experience. “The current militant rhetoric, self-righteousness and lifestyle are painfully old to me,” he continued. “I have seen the same intonations, the same cadence, the same crowd manipulation techniques, the same visions of mystical redemption, the same faith that certain costumes, gestures, phrases and group emotional release would somehow lead to the Promised Land. And I have seen the same hustling messiahs driving their Cadillacs and getting their pictures in the paper.”
• “After Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then President Lyndon B. Johnson’s assistant secretary of labor, noted, in a 1965 government study of the black family, that the growing number of black children born to single mothers was bound to hinder the future social and economic progress of blacks, civil rights leaders, politicians, commentators, and other critics denounced Moynihan as a bigot who was “blaming the victim.” And when two well-regarded social scientists, Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, published a frank and comprehensive critique of black colleges in a 1967 issue of the Harvard Educational Review, they received similar treatment.”
•
Sowell’s growing suspicion was that colleges and universities weren’t really serious about educating blacks. Rather, they wanted more blacks matriculating on campus for the sake of appearances, and they were setting up black studies departments haphazardly as a “pay-off to prevent campus disruption.”
• “Actually, some of the most relevant studies for dealing with ghetto needs would be medicine, law and business administration,” he wrote. “Black people must be able to provide for themselves, cure themselves and defend themselves against injustices, under integration, separation, or whatever.” Instead, too many of these programs were steering black students into faux “disciplines” where they didn’t have to meet the same academic requirements as their nonblack peers. He feared that black studies would become “merely a euphemism for black political centers housed on college grounds,” with shoddy standards for faculty and students alike. “Like many other things, black studies can be good as a principle and disastrous as a fetish,” he warned. “It cannot take the place of fundamental intellectual skills, or excuse a copping-out from competition with white students.… There are many ways of serving black people, abandoning black people, and exploiting the suffering of black people. Black studies can play any of these roles.”
• “It is considered the height of callousness to tell blacks to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. But the cold historical fact is that most blacks did lift themselves out of poverty by their own bootstraps—before their political rescuers arrived on the scene with civil rights legislation in the 1960s or affirmative action policies in the 1970s. As of 1940, 87 percent of black families lived below the poverty line. This fell to 47 percent by 1960, without any major federal legislation on civil rights and before the rise and expansion of the welfare state under the Great Society programs of President Lyndon Johnson. This decline in the poverty rate among blacks continued during the 1960s, dropping from 47 percent to 30 percent. But even this continuation of a trend already begun long before cannot all be attributed automatically to the new government programs. Moreover, the first decade of affirmative action—the 1970s—ended with the poverty rate among black families at 29 percent. Even if that one percent decline was due to affirmative action, it was not much. The fact that an entirely different picture has been cultivated and spread throughout the media cannot change the historical facts. What it can do—and has done—is make blacks look like passive recipients of government beneficence, causing many whites to wonder why blacks can’t advance on their own, like other groups. Worse, it has convinced many blacks themselves that their economic progress depends on government programs in general and affirmative action in particular. Nevertheless, it is a pragmatic individualism.”
Near the end of the book, Sowell is quoted as saying, “Today at least we know that there are lots of other blacks writing and saying similar things—more than I can keep track of, in fact—and many of them are sufficiently younger that we know there will be good people carrying on the fight after we are gone.”
If you only read one biography this year, read Maverick. This is a 5-Star read, only because I cannot give a 6 Star rating!
Thomas Sowell is now 90 years old and still a prolific writer and contributor. My only sadness is that he has never been awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. In 2015, Forbes magazine said: "It's a scandal that economist Thomas Sowell has not been awarded the Nobel Prize.” So True!
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Dr. Peter Pan
5.0 out of 5 stars The focus is on his work and the ways in which he and it are frequently misinterpreted.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 10, 2021
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I read this excellent biography upon completing two of Sowell's earlier works: Black Rednecks and White Liberals, and Wealth, Poverty and Politics. I was led to these by an interview I saw with Sowell on Uncommon Knowledge (You Tube). I was particularly struck by his response to a question about shifting his ideological position - because of a growing acquaintance with the facts. This, I thought, is a man I must read. He did not disappoint. These are substantial works that cannot be summarised in a few sentences, so I'll just offer one example from Sowell's work and one from Riley's biography. By way of preface, I am an Englishman who lives in England and am, therefore, somewhat detached from the controversial elements in Sowell's work that pertain to the USA. Nevertheless, I do get a sense of sadness coming through his writing.
One of the many facts to which he draws readers' attention is that many American black people seem to have adopted as their own, spurred on by black 'leaders', a cultural attitude derived from the redneck or cracker culture of certain white communities who settled in the antebellum south. Those communities came from particular areas in Britain. It was a hothead culture that eschewed educational and business achievement and it contributed significantly to the lack of economic advancement experienced by those communities. By contrast, Sowell reports on the economic successes of other groups who suffered considerable levels of discrimination in various parts of the world, e.g. diaspora Chinese in SE Asia, Lebanese in Africa, Japanese in Peru and the USA, Jews in the USA, and others. He identifies common denominators in those successes - mainly connected with a culture of hard work, enterprise and educational achievement. There is the formula that black Americans could adopt, and I sense Sowell's sadness in the fact that, by and large, they have not done so.
Amongst the many insightful gems in Riley's biography I will mention just his simple observation that despite many assertions in the media that Sowell was a Republican conservative '... the reality is that Sowell was a registered Democrat until 1972 and has never been a registered Republican.' So I will conclude with another quotation from Riley that, for me, makes Sowell an important contributor to modern social debates: 'Sowell has shown time and again over the decades that he is his own man, even when it meant ruffling the feathers of ideologial allies.' If you seek exposure to courageous independent thinking then read Riley and Sowell.
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Alistair
5.0 out of 5 stars Honest evaluation of an intellectual giantReviewed in India on March 7, 2022
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This is a good and very timely introduction to the thought of Thomas Sowell. I credit him with opening my eyes to the conservative viewpoint, being that today's popular culture and media is awash with so called "progressive" ideas that are largely hollow rehashing of ideas that have come and gone in the past. Fundamentally progressives mis-diagnose the human condition and therefore they cannot possibly prescribe a cure for it, all progressives can do at best is attach band-aid to wounds that need surgery. I accessed Sowell's work at first through his many interviews done with The Hoover Institution. Now I am slowly delving deeper into his work starting with "Conflict of Visions". May the tribe of Sowell scholars increase.
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Michael J. Burke
5.0 out of 5 stars Biography of a great manReviewed in Australia on June 19, 2021
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Some years ago, I had an online conversation with an apparently well-educated American woman who had questioned my admiration of Thomas Sowell's opinion on some aspect of American society. She wondered why I, an Australian, would refer to him as a credible authority. Did I not understand that he was not well known in the United States? Nobody there had heard of him, she claimed.
I hope this excellent book will redress that obvious ignorance.
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James K
5.0 out of 5 stars Sowell is a genius.Reviewed in Canada on June 26, 2021
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Great read for people who need deprogramming as an introduction to Sowell’s genius.
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Claudio Cardoso
5.0 out of 5 stars An absolute must read.Reviewed in Brazil on August 21, 2021
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Thomas Sowell, maybe the greatest live free thinker, pictured by an excellent biographer. Highly recommended.
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Amy
Aug 15, 2021Amy rated it it was amazing
Shelves: history, thomas-sowell, favorites, books-i-wouldn-t-mind-owning, made-me-think, mind-blown, politics, bio, jurisprudence
Don't let the subtitle fool you. Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell contains very few details about Thomas Sowell the person. You won't walk away knowing if Sowell is religious, or married, or fond of his mother. The book sends curious readers to Sowell's early memoirs for such nonessential, biographical details.
What this biography does offer is a comprehensive overview of Sowell's writings, philosophy, and intellectual mentors, usually in his own words. And surprisingly, the tradeoff works really well.
At 91 (and still writing!), Sowell and his books span literally generations of readers. Yet while the face of culture might change, the philosophies underpinning culture do not. And because Sowell tackles philosophies, his writing possesses a timeless quality that allows a book written in the 1980s to feel shockingly applicable in 2021.
What makes Sowell great is not what he overcame (though that alone is incredible), but his written clarity and consistent, systematic approach to subjects as varied as economics, race, and culture. And that is what this biography manages to beautifully highlight.
The fact that Sowell continues to contribute to the modern discourse in many ways undermines how much he already has written. It shocked me to realize that Friedrich A. Hayek and Milton Friedman were not his predecessors but his contemporaries. Sure, I've seen the YouTube videos with Friedman and Sowell discussing the welfare system. But it never clicked that Sowell was as much at his intellectual height then as now. Sowell is still with us and Friedman is dead!
Maverick offers other reasons that Sowell has yet to receive true credit as an economist and political thinker. In particular, it blames the world of academia for turning its back on him when he refused to toe the party line. His willingness to take on current events and apply his own theory to reality also sets him apart. But mot significantly, the book emphasizes the challenges faced by Sowell as a black man for the most part ignored by "black academia."
The biography spends significant time on the criticisms leveled against Sowell. At times, that frustrated me. It seemed like stooping to their level to even mention criticisms attacking Sowell's motivation over his ideas. But as the book goes on, it becomes increasingly obvious that there isn't really much else to engage with. Most critics do not address what Sowell actually says. They question why he says it; they misrepresent what he says. But intellectual engagement doesn't really happen. Which is a pity, because it also manages to ignore Sowell's contributions.
I suspect the situation will not last long. Maverick will serve as a cornerstone for increased academic interest in Sowell and his contribution to society for years to come. Perhaps most impressively, it will do so because it take a page from Sowell's book and doesn't prescribe how Sowell's writings will impact the future. It traces Sowell's intellectual heritage, explores the contours of his ideas, and leaves much left for future writers to explore in greater detail.
This wasn't a perfect biography by any means. For one, this really isn't a "biography" in any traditional sense. And for two, by necessity, even summaries of Sowell's works can't compare to just reading Sowell. But it does an important job recognizing Sowell's place in history and affirming him as one of the greats who came out of the Chicago school of economics.
Definitely worth reading. (less)
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Samuel Parkison
Jun 03, 2021Samuel Parkison rated it it was amazing
“There is nothing new under the sun.” I think it’s no exaggeration to say if everyone who is invested in discussions of social justice—who are interested in actual solutions and not just idealogical confirmation—would carefully sift through Thomas Sowell’s corpus, there would be exponentially more clarity around the conversation. The reason why Christians, especially, should care about the work of Sowell is that we are ministers of reality. We believe God created the cosmos with a nature, and knowing him involves knowing our place in his world as his creatures. Sowell may not be a Christian, but he is a *scientist* in the true sense of the word—he describes the world as it is. The reason why social engineering or egalitarian utopias are not possible is not because they are bad ideas in the abstract, it’s because they do not correspond to reality. The cosmos is not an egalitarian neutral blob, and people and their wealth are not figures that social engineers can move around to no effect. People create wealth, not governments, and they create wealth when they have the opportunity to do so, and when they are culturally incentivized to do so—but cultural incentives cannot be artificially exported from the government. Without fail, with almost no exception, impoverished demographics that rise out of poverty do so without the help of government intervention, and government intervention, without fail, with almost no exception, worsens poverty. Sowell didn’t arrive at that conclusion because he was philosophically compelled to by well-reasoned conservatives. He was a Marxist socialist all the way through graduation with his PhD, after having trained under the Chicago School of Economics giants like Milton Friedman. Rather, Sowell was compelled to reach this conclusion by the hard facts of data.
It is mind-boggling to me how much this giant has been ignored by the intellectual elites. There is no way—no WAY—he isn’t vindicated by history as one of this generations most important and well-versed public intellectuals. The man cannot stop: there’s not a topic he has approached without garnering recognition from that topics’ leading experts as top tier. There are some people who are experts in one area, and some who are generalists and therefore novices in many, but there are few folks like Thomas Sowell who becomes an expert in multiple fields: he was a trained economist, a leading socialist, commentator on politics and race, an expert on education, early childhood development, and the history of ideas. It’s no wonder the elite establishment ignores him: he is so cogent, his opponents simply do not have answers.
The thing that was most striking about this intellectual biography is Sowell’s fearlessness. He had an unyielding allegiance to truth and never compromised his analysis for any special interest group. I was also challenged by his reflections on the importance of academic standards. My future students may well rue the day I came across this biography... (less)
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T
Jul 18, 2021T rated it it was ok
Disappointing hagiography which shoehorns in political gripes of the day between extreme flattery, and seldom cites any critics, despite pages of tirades against amorphous angry detractors of the subject ...
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Tom Stamper
Jul 12, 2021Tom Stamper rated it it was amazing
Shelves: biography, economics
I was first aware of Sowell in the 1990s, reading his syndicated column when I became interested in politics. There was clarity in what he wrote that set him apart from other people on the editorial pages. He would often tackle conventional wisdom, and then explain how such thinking lacked empirical evidence. I went to the library looking for anything by the man and picked Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality. I chose it because it was a short book and I figured it might take me a lot of time to digest it. Surprisingly, the book was breeze to read.
I didn’t fully appreciate what a good writer Sowell was until I began a Masters Degree in Political Science. Thomas Sowell wrote clearly like the masters of political theory. He fit in with Tocqueville, Plato, Mill, and Burke.
But it wasn’t until later when I read Sowell’s, A Conflict of Visions, that I saw that he really did belong to the greats. Why do the same people wind up on opposite sides of political issues even when those issues seem unrelated? It was a question I had never asked, and then I immediately needed to know the answer. That book became a lens by which I tend to examine most every political issue since. I even ran the idea by my wife on our first date. I don’t think she was the least bit interested, but found me cute enough to let it pass.
Jason Riley also explains how he came to read Sowell and what Sowell’s work means to him, and to the political discussion of our times. Sowell takes complex ideas and writes about them in such a straightforward manner, that you come away better educated. Even when you disagree, a worthy adversary such as Sowell makes you strengthen your own arguments. I hated Plato’s vision for the community of wives, but it made me think and articulate why it was a bad idea. Sowell is a writer of that class. Riley's book helps you to understand Sowell’s intellectual progression and it will help you appreciate Sowell’s work even more when you tackle it directly. (less)
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Jeanette
Aug 08, 2021Jeanette rated it liked it · review of another edition
This was interesting from an outsider looking into the world of economics study. That's how I took it. But it was not at all what I thought it would be. Which was a personal or pivotal to his long life study or detailing for the person.
This is at least 75% the progressions of Thomas Sowell's determinations over the years within the groups and institutes for which he has been a pivotal part. Which to me, is quite different than a life biography.
If you want more than a thorough lecture in Economic Theory and data for the various past movements of theory belief? Or if you want a more succinct progression of how Sowell almost universally uses outcome data and reality stats that are provable? Or want a hard look at the personal life progressions and setbacks? I suggest his own Personal Odyssey.
This was good in targeting Sowell Economics study and progression. But to me, it was also nearly the opposite of Sowell's writing. Thomas Sowell's writing is exquisite. Understated and exact at the same time as it eliminates all dual definition and subjective equivocation. And this was nearly the opposite. The author is very smart, for sure. But he doesn't have the Sowell gift for expression toward the core immediate. Way too many sidebars and run arounds.
As an aside- I read the hard cover copy which is not listed here. This is a difficult read and you need to understand many different Economic theory schools or past group associations.
I did get this nuance for this particular read. And at essence this is that from his boyhood Thomas Sowell has NEVER been influenced by the glam or prestige quotient of anything anywhere. He only went to Univ. of Chicago because he followed a mentor there during and after his PhD work.
Any publication by Thomas Sowell is like a classical piece of orchestra- while this is more a 5 piece afternoon Tea ensemble.
I did like to learn which Sowell's works are his own favorites. And that little surprises me. Analytical supreme gems- everything he writes. (less)
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Sheila McCarthy
May 27, 2021Sheila McCarthy rated it it was amazing
Not a biography of Sowell but a biography of his ideas, which are sure to shock those unfamiliar with them. Of course, Riley stresses that too often Sowell's critics refuse to take on his ideas and resort to ad hominem attacks. Even readers who disagree with Sowell have to admire his logic and clear writing. Riley's style, too, is straightforward and reflects, like Sowell, an uncanny ability to explain complex ideas. Having said all that, I hope both men are living under Salman Rushdie-like protection. (less)
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Martin
May 29, 2021Martin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Shelves: history, economics, audio, politics
Terrific book! Jason Riley is a superior writer. Written in the style of the WSJ's big Saturday interviews, Riley mixes quotes from Sowell, his friends, colleagues, and critics to weave a history of Sowell's professional life and his intellectual pursuits as an academic and author. The book quickly skips through Sowell's early life. The action picks up when Sowell is admitted to Harvard to complete his undergraduate degree.
I didn't know anything about Sowell's personal history until reading this ...more
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Dwayne Roberts
Aug 31, 2021Dwayne Roberts rated it really liked it
Sowell is an intellectual of integrity and ability. His approach to writing and socioeconomic issues is scientific and convincing.
I have a huge respect for Sowell and people like him, including Walter Williams. Long may he live!
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Bill Powers
Jun 17, 2021Bill Powers rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
This is the third Jason Riley book that I have read. The first “Please Stop Helping Us”, followed by “False Black Power?” and now “Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell”. I have enjoyed all three, but with Maverick, Riley has clearly staked his claim as a major serious thinker among black conservatives. I also follow Riley’s Opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal and highly recommend them.
Maverick focus more on Sowell’s evolution as an economist and how he has applied economic analysis to is ...more
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John of Canada
Mar 24, 2022John of Canada rated it it was amazing
Shelves: made-me-think, non-fiction, history, economics, favourite-author, motivation, 6-star-reads, business-and-finance, politics, philosophy
So this book is going on my new bookshelf, and I will be gifting it as well. I also have a list of books to add to my tbr. Empirical evidence, pragmatism and other new categories for me to read and reread. I appreciate that Riley, Sowell and others are not afraid to fight progressive propaganda with facts. I'm am not surprised that Sowell was so disliked by academia and the media. It took me a while to finish this, there was so much there. I will probably re-read it several times. ...more
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Eric Baldwin
Mar 10, 2021Eric Baldwin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Excellent book about Thomas Sowell including many extended quotes.
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David Steele
Jun 02, 2021David Steele rated it really liked it
Illuminating biography about Thomas Sowell, a great American intellectual.
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Mars Cheung
Jun 02, 2021Mars Cheung rated it it was amazing
This isn’t an biography of Thomas Sowell’s life but a general overview of his intellectual contributions ranging from writings on economics, political philosophy and race dynamics. I’ve read some of Sowell’s work and have discussed much of it with others. His books themselves are very, very rich with content and data making them impossible to truly summarize in their entirety here. Read for an overview on what Thomas Sowell is about and then dive into one of his books for a rich intellectual jou ...more
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Kathleen
Feb 18, 2022Kathleen rated it it was amazing
Maverick is considered a biography of Thomas Sowell, but actually is more of a compilation of his teachings. Thomas Sowell was born into poverty in rural North Carolina without the simple amenities of running water and electricity. Both his parents died. He was raised by a great aunt, and relocated to Harlem. Sowell was accepted into a prestigious magnet public high school. Although he was very intelligent, Sowell dropped out of school at 17, left home and lived in a homeless shelter. It was after he fought as a Marine in the Korean War and qualified for the GI bill, that his life turned around. He received his GED and enrolled at Howard University. Transferring to Harvard in his sophomore year, Sowell graduated with a degree in Economics before moving on to Columbia for his Masters and then to University of Chicago for his PhD. A known Marxist at the time, Sowell challenged his professors at the University of Chicago, who in turn encouraged him to use empirical data to qualify his beliefs. Ideas/theories are necessary but data and evidence is needed to prove that idea as truth. That detail became the foundation of all that is Thomas Sowell. Starting his career as professor at Rutgers, Howard, Cornell, Amherst, UCLA...until his position with the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. A prolific writer and author, Sowell has more than 50 books/essay series with his name. Everything he has written has empirical data to back up his beliefs. However, Sowell has written about more than just economic theory, price control, and causes of stagflation. He is also known for writing about political differences and ideology, ethnic cultures, social programs and social inequality. His views on racial mobility, affirmative action and educational desegregation are thought provoking. However, there can be no doubt that outcome of Dunbar High School in Washington should have been avoided. This book is well written and fully researched. Of all his books, Thomas Sowell is most proud of Conflict of Vision...added to my “to read list”. (less)
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Tim M
May 31, 2021Tim M rated it it was amazing
Fantastic and important book. This intellectual biography is well-structured and spends minimal time on Sowell's personal life - a good decision given that many readers interested in this book will likely already be familiar with Sowell's life or could get those details straight from his autobiographical works.
The main sections of the book are broken out into the major themes of Sowell's writing over the last five decades. Riley shows absolute mastery of the subject matter. Even those who have followed Sowell's career closely will find fresh and original information via the first-hand interviews Riley conducted for the book. I believe this will be a highly enjoyable book for anyone already interested in its subject, but more importantly will serve as an excellent guide for those in the future who come across Sowell and desire to learn more. Riley clearly not only deeply understands Sowell's work, but also has the journalistic talents to relay the significance of that work in a compelling and deeply contextualized manner that is highly rewarding for the reader. (less)
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Steve
Dec 22, 2021Steve rated it it was amazing
Tom Sowell is a national treasure. There are a lot of really smart people out there (across all points of the political spectrum), but to me, what sets apart the truly great public intellectuals like Sowell and Jordan Peterson above the rest is their common sense and practical wisdom.
One of my favorite quotes from the book:
…liberal elites placed the onus on whites to fix the problems of blacks. Newer movements like Black Lives Matter, and younger public intellectuals …remain far more interested in white behavior than in black behavior. Sowell took a different approach. “The sins of others are always fascinating to human beings, but they are not always the best way to self-development or self-advancement,” he said. “The moral regeneration of white people might be an interesting project, but I am not sure we have quite that much time to spare. Those who have fought on this front are very much like the generals who like to refight the last war instead of preparing for the next struggle.” (less)
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