A Man of Letters by Thomas Sowell is indeed interesting. And it is such a shame that Sowell is so little known. Indeed, he mentioned in "A Man of Letters" that his books typically sell only around 75,000 copies. Considering the wisdom to be found in his writings, that is sad. There is no other word for it.He mentioned that he finds airline travel burdensome, and at his age he will not agree to it. He was told he was to be awarded a prize and declined to travel to Washington to accept it. But in this case he was further told that the prize was a $250,000 award - and that a private jet would be put at his disposal for the trip. He went, and reports that he now knows one thing that he would do with wealth - travel by private jet.
First I ever heard of Sowell was reading Knowledge and Decisions, and it turns out that that was his breakout accomplishment, leading to his appointment to the Hoover Institution. And although he got his PhD because he wanted to teach, and although he loved to mentor, academic political correctness made a happy teaching career impossible to him. So the Hoover Institution was a real lifesaver for him.
Remind me. Isn’t his degree, specialty, in the area of statistics? It has been awhile since I read his book. I originally found it facinating becuase, to tell the truth, it was a subject I knew would give me a real bad case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over). LOL! But he is certainly a man of many interests when you read his column regularly. I think he is well known, but like I said, he is dicounted by the left as a “sellout” like any black conservative is. It takes us right back to my original thoughts. The one thing I find very frustrating is the lefts constant condemnation of people and opinions they do not know. FOX is biased, Sowell is a sellout, etc. As for me, I spend a lot of time getting both sides of every story. If I see a thread here I open DU or KOS just to see what they are saying.
I got a kick out of your info on Sowell and airline travel. It made me think of something I witnessed back in the 70’s. I was living in Fairbanks Alaska. A theater group at the U of A put on the first ever stage version of The Martian Chronicles, from the book by Ray Bradbury. Before the performance I letter from Mr. Bradbury was read to the audiance in which he said he wished he could have attended, but there was no way that he could becuase the only way he could get there was by air.....and he was afraid of flying. And this was a guy who wrote about space travel. LOL!