Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Born in North Carolina, Sowell grew up in Harlem, New York. He dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. Upon returning to the United States, Sowell enrolled at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in 1958. He received a master's degree from Columbia University in 1959, and earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. Previously married to Alma Jean Parr from 1964 to 1975, Sowell married Mary Ash in 1981. He has two children, John and Lorraine.
Sowell has taught economics at Howard University, Rutgers, Cornell, Brandeis University, Amherst College, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1980, he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman, his mentor. In addition, Sowell appeared several times on William F. Buckley Jr.'s show Firing Line, during which he discussed the economics of race and privatization.
Themes of Sowell's writing range from social policy on race, ethnic groups, education, and decision-making, to classical and Marxian economics, to the problems of children perceived as having disabilities.
Books with red borders are part of my own, personal reading-list. (Some are linked to their respective Wikipedia pages.)
Good starting points into the mind of this legend are:
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