Posted on 07/16/2023 4:55:25 AM PDT by karpov
Thomas Sowell, now 93 years old, is one of the most esteemed and prolific authors and social commentators today. Trained as an economist at Harvard and the University of Chicago, he has written more than thirty books, and from 1991 to 2016, he had a nationally syndicated column.
Sowell’s readers and admirers include the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and the former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson.
Pinker has characterized Sowell as the most underrated author in history. He also stated that, “Sowell is a libertarian conservative, which makes him taboo in mainstream intellectual circles, but even those who disagree are well advised to grasp his facts and arguments.”
Mike Tyson has been publicly spotted carrying a copy of Sowell’s book Basic Economics.
Thomas Sowell was a Marxist as a young man. Today, though, he is generally considered to be on the political right.
I recently read his memoir, A Personal Odyssey.
The entire book is superb. However, the sections that were most compelling for me cover his childhood, early life in poverty, teenage homelessness, experiences of being drafted into the Marine Corps, and financial struggles during his college and grad school years.
Here I’ll share some lessons from the book that stood out to me.
Not all of these lessons, of course, were learned for the first time.
(Excerpt) Read more at robkhenderson.com ...
Thomas Sowell is a national treasure.
/\ This! /\
I relied on Sowell’s book “Basic Economics” in all the years of teaching econ.
I have had him on my FReep Page for years as one of my "heroes". And I have found his debate performances and interviews over the years to be phenomenally entertaining and educational.
Basic Economics was my first book of his I read, and right after reading it, I purchased both the audiobook and the eBook, so I could mark it up.
I give that book as a gift to people. It is so absolutely approachable in the way it was written. I believe that is the strength of the book.
I never got around to reading any of Sowell’s books although I read his columns regularly. One of those things on my “to Do” list, but when you get fresh milk daily you don’t worry about how to run a dairy.
Can anyone tell me the one or two books out of his list that are the required reading for the definitive Sowell? Time to complete that part of my To Do list in honor of a great American.
Made my post before I read all the comments, some of which had some advice on reading the Sowell book list. I will start there, but anyone with additional recommendations please feel free to add.
You need to start with his basic economics work.
Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy (1st ed.) . Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-08145-2.
That sets the stage for all the rest.
I feel he’s one of the greatest thinkers of our time and his ability to articulate his thoughts, second to none. Rush Limbaugh had this gift as well.
bump
“Nothing is easier, or more
emotionally satisfying, than
blaming high prices on those who
charge them, rather than on
those who cause them.”
—Thomas Sowell
“One of the sad signs of our times is that
we have demonized those who produce,
subsidized those who refuse to produce,
and canonized those who complain. “
Thomas Sowell
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
Thomas Sowell
What exactly is your ‘fair share’ of what ‘someone else’ has worked for?
- Thomas Sowell
“The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of liberals expansion of the welfare state.”
-Thomas Sowell
I knew people like Sgt Gordon who pretended to be buddies while they were bad mouthing you and others. I wonder if Gordon ended up in Korea?
“Sowell knew Sergeant Gordon, the nice one, had overheard him asking for permission to leave the base. Gordon denied having heard anything, and told Sowell, “You’re just going to have to take your punishment like a man.” Gordon fretted that if he crossed the higher-ups, he would be reassigned to fight in Korea.
But unasked, Sergeant Pachuki came forward and spoke with the colonel, explaining the situation. As a result, Sowell was exonerated and returned back to his duties.
Referring to Gordon, the “nice” sergeant who betrayed him, Sowell writes, “People who are everybody’s friend usually means they are nobody’s friend.”
_________________________
Like global warming or covid etc.
“What I most disliked about Harvard was that smug assumptions were too often treated as substitutes for evidence or logic. The idea seemed to be that if we bright and good fellows all believed something, it must be true.”
_________________________
Thomas Sowell writes that before he was scheduled to debate Kenneth Arrow (Nobel prize-winning economist), someone asked him if he was nervous because Arrow was so smart. Sowell replied “I don’t mind debating smart people. It’s debating stupid people that’s hard.”
______________________________
The seventeenth-century Spanish philosopher Baltasar Gracián wrote:
“Twice the wit is needed to deal with someone with none.”
Another bump for later.
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