Sowell is an interesting chap. He's pretty much anathema to the left...
He's a Black, Conservative, and strongly opposed to affirmative action.
interesting... I first came to sowell via anthropology, where I read his trilogy on culture -- race and culture, migrations and culture, conquests and cultures. I never viewed him as right left conservative liberal white black etc., as the scope of his analyses transcended all that -- historically and geographically -- dealing as it did with centuries of global systems, people and phenomena.
what I enjoy about sowell is that, at the risk of being unpopular and controversial, he often upsets cliches and exposes conventional thinking. makes you think. all while being analytical and dispassionately scientific, synthesizing information from a variety of worlds -- technological, social, political, economic, aesthetic, etc.
we can agree or disagree with his ideas, but I think it's limiting, pre-emptive somehow, to dismiss them with labels like conservative or black or rightwing... here's a blurb that kind of sums it up for me:
"What makes Conquests and Cultures, and indeed all of Sowell’s books, so valuable is his dogged insistence on looking at things the way they really are. Intellectual fashions and emotions are not his concern; facts are. Years ago, when a critic accused him of being indifferent to the poor, he remarked, "Before one can be a partisan of the poor, he must first be a partisan of the truth." That is the best reason to read the "culture" trilogy--its relentless pursuit of the truth, no matter whom it offends."
* * *
[also, just want to say, sowell's not the only one I read, of course; it's just that his book, the vision of the anointed, seemed relevant while the age-old contest of visions and power was being re-enacted on this list over the historic district topic... perhaps a more interesting, accessible, closer-to-home book for this list would be bobos in paradise by david brooks. anyone here read that?]
:-)
......... laserbeam [aka ray]
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