A Man of Letters [Hardcover]

Thomas Sowell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 2007

A Man of Letters traces the life, career, and commentaries on controversial issues of Thomas Sowell over a period of more than four decades through his letters to and from family, friends, and public figures ranging from Milton Friedman to Clarence Thomas, David Riesman, Arthur Ashe, William Proxmire, Vernon Jordan, Charles Murray, Shelby Steele, and Condoleezza Rice. These letters begin with Sowell as a graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1960 and conclude with a reflective letter to his fellow economist and longtime friend Walter Williams in 2005.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Tom Sowell is a national treasure, America's most perceptive, productive, and thoughtful commentator on racial and ethnic issues. -- Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, authors of America in Black and White

From the Publisher

"Thomas Sowell is America's foremost public intellectual and for good reason. His work covers almost every subject imaginable-- race, economics, Marxism, ethnic groups, immigration patterns, just to name a few. He is persuasive and provocative and always scintillating. I've read all his books and never been even faintly disappointed..." -Fred Barnes, executive editor,The Weekly Standard and Fox News Commentator

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; 1 edition (March 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594031967
• ISBN-13: 978-1594031960
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #788,123 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

102 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thomas' Sowell, April 9, 2007

By 

Dash Manchette - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Man of Letters (Hardcover)

No doubt many people will be drawn to this book for the same reason I was. It is not so much to pick up anything new of Sowell's ideas. At this point, after several decades and dozens of book, his ideas are familiar to those who are interested in them. But rather, for those of us who took the journey from the left to the right, it was Sowell more than anyone else whose writings seemed to place whatever experiences in our lives may have been the impetus for such a journey into context.

For me, it was INSIDE AMERICAN EDUCATION, not a major work by Sowell, but an intellectual life-preserver to me while I was being viciously attacked by the politicially correct crowd while in graduate school. The book produced those a-ha moments which precipitate a major change in ideological orientation. Again, no doubt others have had a similar experience with Sowell. A MAN OF LETTERS therefore, is not so much an intellectual excercise to learn something new, but rather a nice treat that allows us a better glimpse at the man to whom intellectually we owe so much. I am happy to say that the book provides such a view much better than the unfortunately sterile A PERSONAL ODYSSEY, Sowell's memoirs, of a few years back.

Anyone familiar with Sowell's background will find a lot of familiar ground here. There is his early teaching career at various schools, including the controversial times at Howard and Cornell. The reader also is in the passenger seat for Sowell's intellectual journeys through such areas as education, race relations and ethnic histories, the history of ideas and ideology. One is struck time and time again at how much of his own path Sowell really blazed. This is a man, after all, who made his first public comments against racial preferences in 1963, one year before the landmark Civil Rights Act.

By rummaging through his old letters and serving them up to the reader, Sowell provides a much more human face to the man behind these ideas. And what a list of pen pals - Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Clarence Thomas and Walter Wiliams are just some of the names most people will recognize. Sowell also includes many letters to and from the not-so-famous but who are nonetheless important in his own life. Again, this serves to place many of the man's thoughts and ideas into a context more emotionally accessible than usual.

Broken down by year from the 1960s to the near present, A MAN OF LETTERS is exceptionally readable as well as exceptionally enjoyable. Sowell is a national treasure and reading these personal correspondences gives one a feeling similar to gaining inside access to otherwise classified documents on some important but ill-researched aspect of American history. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful companion to Sowell's "A Personal Odyssey", May 23, 2007

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Man of Letters (Hardcover)

I have admired Thomas Sowell since I first read his writings more that twenty years ago. When clerks at the local Ann Arbor Borders (in the original store on State St.) chided me for buying a book of his I asked them why they disliked him. They (and there was more than one) said that he had benefited from Affirmative Action and now wanted to keep anyone else from doing so. Knowing how wrong this idea was, I pointed out to them that he was born in 1930 and that his achievements were made long before anyone had dreamt up those crippling policies. For this they had no reply.

If you haven't read Thomas Sowell's memoir "A Personal Odyssey" (ISBN 0684864657), I encourage you to get a copy and read about his extraordinary life. It will certainly surprise you. His background was not only unlikely for someone who became a highly regarded economist and commentator; it was unlikely that he would even go to college. He certainly had no straight path to success, either. What he had was an intense focus on where he wanted to go (even though that changed in unexpected ways over the years), a core understanding of who he was, and a commitment to reason and truth. Still, he did not have an easy personal or professional life. You will learn more about that interesting and inspiring life by reading the memoir and this wonderful book.

This book is a collection of letters he wrote and received throughout his life. They are so valuable because they are contemporary to the man Sowell was at the time. As we look back on our lives it is quite easy to fall into the trap of making the path of our life too straight a path to where we are today. When Sowell first got to college he was a Marxist, if you can believe it. It is quite fascinating to watch his grappling with ideas that lead him to the University of Chicago, George Stigler, Milton Friedman, and the other greats in the freshwater school.

He provides us with some background for the letters and in a few places refers the reader to more extended commentary in the memoir (another reason I recommend it to you). Sowell is also a writer of wit. I laughed out loud several times. He is also writes concisely. No rambling or side journeys for him. The letters get to the point and say what they meant to say quite directly and clearly. He covers the issues of the relevant decades, what was happening in his life, and even provides us with a few of his favorite articles and columns when that became a bigger part of his life.

His work in late talking children that grew out of his own son's development is also quite inspiring and shows the background of what became a much bigger movement than he ever expected or desired.

This book is inspiring, informative, and I believe it is quite valuable. Get it, read it, learn from it, and enjoy it (along with the memoir).

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Nominate Thomas Sowell for the Nobel Prize, May 23, 2007

By 

Rusty Johnson "Mange Takk!" (Maquoketa, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Man of Letters (Hardcover)

An example from May 16, 2007 ...

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/05/16/presumptions_of_the_left

... how Thomas Sowell can say what I only wish I could put into so few words:

Presumptions of the Left

by Thomas Sowell

"Many on the left may protest that they do not believe in the ideas or the political systems that prevailed under Hitler, Stalin or Mao. No doubt that is true.

Yet what the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others."

Thomas Sowell (national treasure) gets my vote for most intelligent man in America.

He deserves a Nobel Prize in Economics. In addition, award him a Nobel Peace Prize and he can visit Oslo and the rest of Norway after picking up his prize in Stockholm.

Mange Takk!