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A Man of Letters

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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.

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).

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!

His letters of the past 40 years gives us a glimpse to one of the greatest modern thinker's life. I have read Mr. Sowell's editorials many times and always find his commonsense to be refreshing. This book takes us through history as he recounts the current events of the time, from his unique perspective, with colleagues, students and policy-makers.

Tom Sowell--whom I must confess I often get confused with Dr Walter Williams-- is nothing less than brilliant. He uses fundamental economic concepts to hoist up so much govt policy, regulation etc into the bright light of day and in so doing he exposes it for the illogic absurdity we in our hearts know it to be all along.
Bravo Sir.. may we have another??

Dr. Sowell continues his personal revelations through a series of letters sent and received. Because of Dr. Sowell's clear thinking and uncompromising honesty plus his sense of the ridiculous, these letters are a joy to read. However, they also offer a view of the evolvement of parts of society (i.e. the academic life) seldom examined so closely. Read this book! It will lead you to his other works which you will want to read. My favorites are "Conflict of Visions" and "Black Rednecks and White Liberals". I encourage everyone to read this book. It will awaken young people to new views and reassure the over 50 crowd that what they suspected was true.

John McCarthy is credited with saying that "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense." This suggests a corollary that is abundantly evident in reading the letters of Thomas Sowell.
As a trained economist, Sowell began his career dealing with the history of economic thought. A Man of Letters follows his correspondence through that five decades of that career and the life of which it is a part.

Sowell can be scathing.

"You may think that you have seen Kilson at his silliest and most pompous, but I can assure you from experience that you have not."

He can be unsparing in his judgment, as he was in a critique of a student's presentation. Ultimately, however, he is doing what a good educator does: challenges the student, allowing no room for ambiguity about whether the student is in fact demonstrating proficiency in the topic at hand.

"More profoundly disturbing than the lack of analytic thinking in your presentation was an apparent unawareness of any distinction between analysis and cursory conclusions. Even after analytic points were spelled out to you, your response was 'but didn't I just say the same things?' No. You did not say the same thing. Many people noted that apples fell off of tress long before Newton, but they did not say 'the same thing' as Newton. It is precisely the systematic development of whys and wherefores that constitutes physics--or economics.

"System, structure, logic, and definition are not mere traditions, like etiquette. They are the very guts of what reasoning is all about. They are what enable you to distinguish between some words that have a good ring to the ear and an idea that makes sense. That distinction is more than formalistic. It has a been mater of life and death in such places as Jonestown and Nazi Germany, and California abounds with little groups that prey on those who cannot make such distinctions."

He can be witty. I spent a fair bit of time chuckling as I read passages. For example, after he joined the Center for Advanced Study right near Stanford University, he wrote to a friend:

"The people at Stanford think that all we do is play volleyball at the Center, but I tell them it is 'gruelling' work: 'Nothing but profound thoughts all day long.'"

Another passage I found amusing was in a letter to an old friend of Sowell's from the Wharton School in Philadelphia. The excerpt concludes:

"The vigor of your disagreement with Walter [Williams], and the courtesy and friendship that went with it, were priceless (if a Chicago economist may use that word)."

Thomas Sowell is a powerful thinker, whose analytic talent and determined pursuit of answers to meaningful questions has done much to help us understand the world around us--often in ways that economists were not necessarily imagined to be most helpful. He is consequently a prolific author. A Man of Letters gives us a glimpse into his thinking behind the scenes. It's an easy read, one that Sowell fans will find rewarding.

As always Mr. Sowell is entertaining and enlightening at the same time. This is one of his lighter reads, quick three page letters organized into several general topics.

His essays are straight forward and simple to understand, based on facts and his life experiences. Rather than listen to the circular talking politicians and economically uneducated I would suggest talking a stab at one of the best writers and intelligent minds this country has to offer.

Thomas Sowell is one of the best writers of modern day condition that I have read. From his columns in the local paper on occasion to his books, which I have all of his publications.... I just cannot get enough of this man's wisdom.

To have a full education in economics and the greater understanding of what potential we have Dr. Sowell is number one on my reading list.

I've just completed T. Sowell's, A Man of Letters. I must say, one of the very best books I've ever read. I'm also glad that I started with this book.(I know how and why his opinions were formed) Awesome writer.

His book traces his life, personal and professional, through one of the most critical times in the history of our country. How his opinions were formed and why he made certain decisions in his life. He spoke of his very humble beginnings, finding his family, his first love, his wives, (and why he stay married to the first one as long as he did) his children, and others. He wrote about his life and how he lived through segregation, affirmative action, the moral degeneration of our youth, and how it relates to the parents of today, are all addressed in his letters. Letters to and from his family, friends, public figures and politicians, including his good friend, Justice Clarence Thomas and surprising to me, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

If there was ever a book that would make me look both ways and back again, when coming to an intersection in life, it is, Thomas Sowell's, A Man of Letters.