Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (HOOVER INST PRESS PUBLICATION) [Paperback]

Thomas Sowell (Author)

Book Description

Series: HOOVER INST PRESS PUBLICATION | Publication Date: January 15, 1999

In this latest collection of his highly provocative essays, Thomas Sowell once again demonstrates why he is one of the most thoughtful, readable, and controversial thinkers of our time. With his usual unrelenting candor, he cuts through the stereotypes, popular mythology, and what he calls the "mush" surrounding the critical issues facing the American social, economic, political, legal, racial, and education scenes. Sowell's hard-hitting, and ruthlessly honest, views include his commentary on

• Affirmative Action "No dogma has taken a deeper hold with less evidence—or in the face of more massive evidence to the contrary."
• Cultural Bias "Life is culturally biased. . . . As limited human beings, we must make our choices among the alternatives actually available. A culture-free society has never been one of those alternatives."
• The Media "The public apparently has no 'right to know' that the politically correct conclusions they keep hearing may not be factually correct."
• Immigration "The fact that immigrants were once valuable additions to the country does not mean that the same thing may be arbitrarily assumed today, any more than the fact that horses and buggies were once the best way to get around means that we should rely on them today."
• The Minimum Wage "What is the minimum wage law but an unfunded mandate imposed on private organizations? It is like impulse buying and charging it to somebody else's credit card."
• Multiculturalism "Are we to indulge in absolute fantasy and say that statistical 'diversity' promotes better intergroup relations, against blatant evidence that it is poisoning people against one another?"
• Social Security "Nothing is more grossly a transfer of wealth from those with less to those with more. . . . Once we face up to the fact that Social Security is welfare for the elderly, we need to ask ourselves why affluent people of any age should be a burden on others."
• The Litigation Explosion "The very idea that the burden of proof is on the party who makes a legal charge has gone out the window as far as whole categories of charges are concerned. This is true in . . . so-called women's issues, racial issues, environmental issues, and other crusades pushed by strident activists."

Sowell combines applied reason and common sense with actual historical and statistical evidence to demolish widely held views on these and other controversial subjects, including racial quotas, prayer in schools, the health care system, cultural "identity," Wade versus Roe, gays in the military, the death penalty, Louis Farrakhan, and more.

Product Details

• Paperback: 267 pages
• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press (January 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081799582X
• ISBN-13: 978-0817995829
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #741,033 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas Sowell has taught economics at Cornell, UCLA, Amherst and other academic institutions, and his Basic Economics has been translated into six languages. He is currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has published in both academic journals in such popular media as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes magazine and Fortune, and writes a syndicated column that appears in newspapers across the country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Collection of Insightful Essays, November 20, 2000

By 

Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (HOOVER INST PRESS PUBLICATION) (Paperback)

On most days Thomas Sowell's articles are the only thing worth reading in my local newspaper. In a time where most news is unenlightening fluff, Sowell preaches common sense and personal responsibility. This collection of writings is Sowell at his best, covering topics ranging from the death penalty to Clarence Thomas.

Anyone who is even slightly aware of Sowell's work knows his particular disdain for the education establishment. The articles on this topic are the best ones in the book, in my humble opinion. Sowell reveals the American educational establishment as the sick fraud....Sowell is unique in his criticism because he has kept plugging away on this topic for years while others drift in and out of the debate.

Sowell also throws lightening bolts at the leftist demagogues that he refers to as "the Anointed". These are the people in the media, educational establishment and the government that are constantly undermining the rights of everyone else in the country through such trendy ideas as safety, political correctness and a host of other ills...I did give this book four stars. This in no way reflects on the quality of the essays, which are excellent, but is due to the number of errors in the text...

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I am in agreement with the other reviewers, August 23, 2003

By 

Joseph H Pierre "Joe Pierre" (Salem, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (HOOVER INST PRESS PUBLICATION) (Paperback)

Thomas Sowell is more than just a critical thinker: he has a penchant for expressing his ideas with a clarity with which it is difficult to argue. He uses that uncommon commodity known, for some strange reason, as "common sense."

Sowell points out`the ludicrous incongruities of the liberal "philosophy" in terms so plain and unvarnished that only one attempting a proctological examination on themselves could miss it.

An example: "The point of being a superpower is so that no one will attack you and require the sacrifice of more and more young Americans like those buried in this cemetery. We were attacked at Pearl Harbor because we were sitting ducks who had allowed our military forces to dwindle away until we had an army smaller than Portugal's--and not enough equipment even for this small force." Page 7.

Or: "Multiculturism is one of those affectations that people can indulge in when they are enjoying all the fruits of modern technology and can grandly disdain the processes that produced them. None of this would be anything more than another of the many foibles of the human race, except that the cult of multiculturism has become the new religion of our schools and colleges, contributing to the mushing of America. It has become part of the unexamined assumptions underlying public policy and even decisions in courts of law." Page 19.

Or: "Much of the current uproar about IQ differences between blacks and whites does not get down to the rock-bottom question: What is there to explain? The average score of blacks in IQ tests in the United States is about 85, compared to a national averge of 100. Is that unusual? No. It is not." He goes on to explain that various groups of various ancestries have had IQs of 85 at various times and places, and he names some of them, and says that the phenomenon is not peculiar to the United States, and he admits that he doesn't know why. Even American aoldiers of the First World War had lower IQs than our soldiers of the Second World War. Page 176.

This is a man to be reckoned with, and these essays are valuable for their insights, most of which effectively puncture widely and emotionally held ideas, especially those that are deemed "politically correct," and institutionalized unquestioned dogma of the liberal anointed who think they are qualified to tell the rest of us how to think and act.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books

104 of 115 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Typical Sowell--Very Intelligent, December 22, 1999

By 

Steven Fantina (Phillipsburg, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (HOOVER INST PRESS PUBLICATION) (Paperback)

Anyone familiar with Thomas Sowell's widely syndicated columnes will not be surprised by the abundant wisdom that permeates this chrestomathy. Politically Incorrect to the hilt, Sowell has an amazing ability to elevate common sense to an art form. Whether taking on the multiculturalists' drive to Balkanize America, environmental extremists, or self-mutilating corporations, his arguments are eloquent in their profound simplicity

While liberal bashaws certainly will not embrace his erudite dialectics, no reasonable person can dismiss his viewpoints. Even those who disagree with Sowell's observations will be challenged to rethink their positions if they approach his essays with an objective and discerning mind.