I wish I could write like Sowell. His prose is so incisive, exact, and deceptively simple. Of course I do not agree with him on all points—yet that’s really the purpose of his essays. You’re not expected to agree, you’re expected to think critically and question what preemptive conclusions you bring into any sociopolitical discussion.

Here’s the spoiler that many readers trip over: Thomas Sowell is a Black American. Left-leaning readers who know no better often accuse him of racism and “White Privilege” only to be caught embarrassingly tongue tied by this simple phenotypical fact. And because (1) Sowell is so damn smart and (2) solidly conservative/libertarian, Sowell tends to hide his racial identity with the apparent intention of catching his ideological opponents in a rhetorical trap. On this point, I think he’s right. Read his comments about being a child during the Harlem Renaissance and how all that changed after the 1968 riots. You’ll realize there’s more deep scars in history than you realize, and it’s practically pointless to label good and bad actors.

My favorite essay in this collection is “The Fallacy of Fairness”. I think it’s technically a polemic, but the criticisms are so well nuanced that it perfectly cuts short the knee jerk reactions we’ve become accustomed to and actually makes you think, “well, what do I think would be ‘fair’?” There is no perfect answer, and I think on this Sowell exposes a critical flaw in Americans social discussion over the past half century.