Read the whole thing!PALO ALTO, Calif.--Thomas Sowell's excuse for limiting interviews to an hour is that it helps him 'avoid stress.' But one suspects the real reason is that he has better uses for his time than to humor nettlesome journalists. In any case, it's hard to question the time-management preferences of a man who's published nearly 30 books, while also producing academic articles, long-form magazine essays and a seldom-dull newspaper column for more than two decades. Not bad for an orphan from Jim Crow North Carolina who never finished high school and didn't earn a college degree until he was 28.
Mr. Sowell's unorthodox views on racial matters have made him our foremost 'black conservative,' but the modifier sells him way short. He is one of the country's leading social commentators--without qualification. And his scholarship is not only voluminous but wide-ranging, covering everything from education and law to political philosophy, migration and the history of ideas. His primary discipline, however, is economics, specifically the history of economic thought, the subject in which he earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1968 under Milton Friedman and George Stigler. It is the subject he taught at Cornell, UCLA, Amherst, Brandeis and elsewhere during an academic career in the 1960s and '70s. And it is the subject of his most recent book, 'On Classical Economics,' which Yale has just published.
Out of any of the books and columns I've read, Thomas Sowell's name would always come out on top. I probably quote ideas I've read from his books more than any others. His writing played a big part in me deciding to come to George Mason to sutdy economics. I have always been impressed with his insights and the clarity of his thinking on a wide breadth of issues. I wanted to do what I could to learn to think like him.
Perhaps my favorite book by Sowell is "A Conflict of Visions" , which helped tie my economic, political, theological and philosophical views together in a very powerful way. Other books and articles have built on this, but I credit Sowell with helping me to lay much of my intellectual foundation in thinking about these issues.
Sowell truly is a gem in the economics profession. Please read this interview with him and read his books and his articles. I guarantee you will be the better for it!
Also read the Wikipedia entry on Sowell and visit his personal website.
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