Happy 90th Birthday Thomas Sowell – our nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Today is Thomas Sowell’s 90th birthday, and I want to wish him a happy one.
Sowell may also be happy today that he’s been retired for several years, because chronicling our current mess is not fun, although I would dearly love to read or hear what he has to say about it. For many decades, Sowell was one of the most brilliant, clearest, no-nonsense voices in America, although it was mostly the right who listened to him.
Thomas Sowell was also the writer who influenced me most during my political change. Until I read his books about seventeen years ago (I think the first one I encountered may have been The Vision of the Anointed, but another extremely important one for me was The Quest for Cosmic Justice), I just had a vague and growing dissatisfaction with the left, the Democrats, and especially the press. I had no framework in which to place those perceptions, no overview that made sense of them. Sowell provided that. I had no sooner read just a few pages of his thoughts when I breathed a sigh of relief. At last! Someone who made sense. And to think, he’d already been writing for many years at that point and I’d never before heard of him.
I’ve read many of his books since, including his autobiography. Sowell is what used to be called a rugged individualist. He went his own way, and didn’t suffer fools gladly. His work should be known by so many more people than it is. I hope he’s doing well, and I want to thank him from the bottom of my heart.
Here’s some vintage Sowell from 1995. Enjoy:
ADDENDUM: I just discovered that Thomas Sowell gave an interview yesterday to Mark Levin, discussing his new book (new book – at 90!) entitled Charter Schools and Their Enemies. He’s concentrating on education reform at the moment, which seems the heart of the matter. Here’s the entire program on YouTube; the interview with Sowell begins at 1:09:31 and goes till the end. Like virtually everything Sowell writes or says, it’s of great interest. And Sowell sounds as sharp as ever. But I want to highlight the part where, towards the end, Levin tells Sowell of Sowell’s influence on his life and his thinking:
Sowell is certainly worthy of a tribute on his birthday. It is a curious fact, not likely to be acknowledged by leftists, that today’s most distinguished black intellectuals (including Sowell, Walter Williams,Shelby Steele, Carol Swain, Jason Riley, and several others) are hostile to the Afrocentric/Marxist agenda of BLM, while multitudinous race-baiting and well-compensated purveyors of victimhood and grievance are ubiquitous on CNN and MSNBC and in the pages of Pravda-on-the-Hudson and Pravda-on-the Potomac.
Time spent reading and listening to Thomas Sowell was always time well-spent. I have enormous respect for him. I pray he is well in his advancing years.
Sowell is one of the great thinkers of our era.
My husband attended a meeting at Stanford (probably in 1994), and wgile walking around Palo Alto, I picked up Race and Culture at a bookstore. I lovecit. After we got home, I was looking around on the internet and learned that Sowell was black. It blew my mind. I have several of his books and have followed his work on the internet. He is a treasure.
His mind still seems to be working fine because he is now taking on the resistance to charter schools.
Oh wow! Was he really that young looking??? ever???
Time does get to us all!
I recommend this as a source if anyone is interested. I’ve found them to be a good source with accurate descriptions. The prices they show include shipping, but the availability may change if you don’t act right away.
https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?author=Thomas+sowell&title=&lang=en&isbn=&new_used=*&destination=us¤cy=USD&mode=basic&st=sr&ac=qr
I have parleyed your post into Parler.
I’ve read a dozen or more of his books, all worthwhile.
Perhaps Vision of the Anointed would be my highest recommendation.
I have a prized, autographed copy of A Personal Odyssey. On a whim, I mailed it to the Hoover Inst at Stanford with the request and a return envelope. A remarkable and admirable man.
He had such a direct way in approaching issues. After a lot of debate about how, while black Americans were X% of the population, they weren’t X% of the lawyers or doctors or elected government officials and so on…after all the arguments he wrote a book which gathered facts. How many of the truck farmers in Buenos Aires were of Italian descent? How many of the donut shops in California were run by Cambodians? The book went on for hundreds of pages and showed that concentrations of specific races/nationalities/creeds in specific occupations for given geographical areas was a commonplace thing. “Proof by example”
Ever since I read his brilliant book: Knowledge & Decisions, written about 40 years ago, I was hooked. Having read Hayek’s Road To Serfdom, which had a similar effect on me as Sowell’s writing had on Neo, I felt that whereas Hayek was the most eloquent defender of the free society in the last century, he passed the baton to Sowell, who ably ran with it. His other books on culture, including those not prominent here, are truly educational and demonstrate why those members of particular cultures on average tend to be successful in their lives, as opposed to others.
I’ve read 4 of his books. I need to read more.
Well said, Neo. I had no heroes in my life growing up. Didn’t believe in that concept. He’s a hero: a man of courage, conviction, and fierce, disciplined intelligence. He’s also a national treasure.
I wish him another 90.
To me, his masterwork is Marxism. All are good, mind you, but that one makes out the underlying theory in a comprehensible form. It doesn’t read like a translation from German.
Another thing I like is that it is only a the end that he criticizes the theory, except in the sense that any writing about a book is “criticism”. He does an excellent job of untangling Marx’s own ideas from the weeds that have grown up around them. Karl’s own ideas are bad enough, but there’s a lot going under his name that he wouldn’t have recognized. Sowell also rightly turns to Engels to clarify points on which Marx is obscure. A great book. But you can’t go wrong with any of Sowell’s.
Happy birthday to Thomas Sowell. Most readers here probably already know but you can find a wealth of Sowell lore at the Hoover Institution in interviews with Peter Robinson. I hope his next 90 years are equally productive.
Recently saw those old Milton Friedman PBS 1980 videos. 1 hour video, maybe a 30 minute discussion after. Both sides represented. Sowell often a guest. What struck me was how civil the discussions were. Union leaders, economists discussing schools, poverty etc.
He puts it in plain English and he’s a baseball fan.
Libs would hate hate hate him, but they don’t even know him.
I read “Knowledge and Decisions” in the early ’80s and it was what is sometimes called a “permanent experience”, a book that shapes your attitudes for the rest of your life.
When some dork recently said that people should “decolonize their bookshelves” I took a picture of mine – a shelf and a half of Sowell.
All the very best to him!!
First-rate mind, great character. Hope he has a happy birthday. May his audience and impact continue to grow.
I hope he stays a bit longer with us. He’s a powerhouse who brings up salient points about racial discrepancies in America. I worry who will replace him, and Walter, once they pass away. Roger Scruton, a British conservative intellectual, also recently passed away whom I would’ve loved to hear thoughts on the pandemic, the riots, BLM, Cancel Culture etc. Maybe Coleman Hughes is Sowell’s heir? He’s young, whose career trajectory has him in front of the camera before the age of 30 discussing racial matters, so anything can happen to him politically.
We on the right (side) stand on his shoulders. A brave man with a sharp mind. Long may he run.
He will be sorely missed the day he goes…
Sowell is one of the great thinkers of our era.
A name, an achievement, a context. Complete. Happy birthday!
I think it important to know that Sowell and Walter Willams came up before Affirmative Action. Clarence Thomas’s accomplishments have been diminished by Affirmative Action. It is just a shame.
I have long bemoaned the facts that Sowell is too old and too sensible to run for President.
Ran into this sauntering through comments at LI or CTH (hard to remember now).
Video clip of Sowell on reparations.
Thomas Sowell – slavery a universal institution – Western Europe the only location without slavery* – enslaved whites in North Africa exceeded blacks enslaved in America
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1270698317970882568/pu/vid/1280×720/7CFsG2tIUYMK3PoN.mp4?tag=10
*at least by the 19th century; most people don’t know that the English were sending enslaved Scots and Irish to the colonies in the 17th & 18th. However, chattel slavery in the home countries no longer existed (just rural and urban serfs, de facto if no longer de jure).
IMPORTANT o/t Gen. Flynn attorney Sidney Powell gives her longest, most detailed interview to date. How did Judge Sullivan go from previous hero to zero? The “There’s something rotten in Denmark” line needs a serious and far darker revision, today. Down a rabbit hole, into an unbelievable cess pool. Our justice system is corrupt, evil.
“Sidney Powell: Inside the Michael Flynn Case and DOJ Reform | American Thought Leaders,” with a very quiet Jan Jekielek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHeCSjcTC64
Trump must appoint a Special Counsel.
HUZZAH!
Someone such as Thomas Sowell rather than the fraud Barack Obama should have been the first Black Oresident.
Every work is worth the time to read, but “A Conflict of Visions” was a game-changer for me as it gave me a view through progressive eyes. I can understand their world view.
Thomas Sowell is a national treasure. The first book I read by him was “Inside American Education” published in 1992, a must read for anyone with young children. It is that book that prompted me to pay very close attention to what was going on in the classroom. Not surprised to see that his new book is about education. Happy Birthday to a great man!
I’m late to the thread, but I cannot refrain from chiming in with my deep admiration for Thomas Sowell and the wisdom he has passed on to us. A belated birthday greeting to him and hearty wishes for many more.