Book Review
A Man of Letters
By Thomas Sowell (Encounter Books, 2007)
Reviewed by Seth Giertz*
A Man of Letters is quite interesting and an easy read. A Man of Letters is a collection of some of Thomas Sowell’s written correspondence from 1960 to 2007. Over this time Sowell wrote more than twenty books and many more articles and opinion pieces. His work spans a number of subjects, including race and culture, the history of economic thought and the use of knowledge in society. The letters are more-or-less organized chronologically and are supplemented by commentary or background information, and occasionally one of Sowell’s op-ed pieces. The book chronicles much of Sowell’s adult life, but those looking for an autobiography would likely be more interested in Sowell’s A Personal Odyssey.
Sowell spent some of his early career in Washington, DC. While he had affection for the city, he found most of his work in the nation’s capital unfulfilling. He began work for the Department of Labor (while working towards his PhD at the University of Chicago), where looking back he describes many of the “top people” in the department as “genial mediocrities” and the “work and the people…as pedestrian as hell.” One of Sowell’s first academic jobs was with Howard University. Sowell was passionate about teaching and saw Howard as an opportunity to help African Americans. Sowell quickly became disenchanted with school administrators, who he felt were kowtowing to student complaints and interfering with his classes. As a result Sowell resigned from Howard. Later in his career, Sowell worked for a couple of years for one of Washington’s leading think tanks. There he was often disgusted with the amount of bureaucracy in the organization, writing to a consultant, “let me apologize for our stupid bureaucrats. Given the stringent laws on murder, it is not feasible to shoot them, and anything else is only partially effective.”
Sowell’s experience at Howard foreshadowed some of his later teaching experiences at other institutions. Sowell held his students to high standards and had little tolerance for students who were not willing to meet his standards and for administrators interfering in his courses. His teaching stints often led to complaints and withdrawals from students, which led to run-ins with deans and department chairs. In one instance a department chairman said “Now I wouldn’t want to suggest that you raise your grades—,” to which Sowell responded “Oh, I know you wouldn’t[.]” It was not until Sowell took a tenured position with UCLA’s economics department that he seemed content with his job. It was at UCLA that he met a graduate student named Walter Williams. The two were both African Americans from similar socioeconomic backgrounds and with similar political views. The two became friends and their correspondence continues throughout the book. It was in 1980 when Sowell left UCLA to become a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Sowell viewed the offer from Hoover Institution as “the chance of a lifetime.”
While Sowell’s hard-edged persona shines throughout his letters, his writings also show a caring side. This side is displayed in his correspondence with Mrs. G, one of his undergraduate instructors with whom he shares both personal and professional issues. This softer side is also on display in writings related to his children and other family members, as well as former students. This is especially true of a poignant letter he writes to his children. The letter is written prior to his first trip over seas and is only to be opened in the event that he does not survive the trip. Sowell also starts a group to help parents of late talking children.
Prominent throughout the book are his decidedly free-market political views, which are familiar to those who have read his opinion pieces or other works. As an undergraduate, Sowell considered himself a Marxist, however, by the first of the letters, he has already moved considerably to the right. The shift in his politics is evidenced in some of his correspondence with old friends who now hold very different political views from his. For example, one of Sowell’s friends from his more liberal days sent him an article on the plight of African Americans that his friend thought might strike a chord with Sowell. To his friend’s chagrin, Sowell responded that the article “is such a mixture of insights and utter nonsense that it is hard to know where to start to criticize it. I suppose going page by page is as good a way as any.” One might suspect that interaction with Milton Friedman, George Stigler and others at the University of Chicago led Sowell to change his views. However, he contends that his experience working in government was the key factor. He states that “the experience of seeing government at work from the inside and at a professional level started me to rethinking the whole notion of government as a potentially benevolent force in the economy and society.”
Sowell is never afraid to speak his mind, even when prudence would advise against doing so. I have already mentioned his run-ins with administrators over his teaching philosophy. While at Cornell he was an outspoken critic of the university’s president – including in an editorial in the New York Times. Faculty criticizing their university’s presidents is not all that uncommon; however, it is for untenured faculty. Even in dealings with George Stigler, Sowell’s dissertation chair, he can be blunt and sarcastic. In one exchange he writes to Stigler: “I honestly don’t know what to advance as a further argument because I see nothing to argue against…just an insistence that I prove Malthus meant what he said. How many ad hoc statements add up to a standard view?” Later, after defending his dissertation he writes to Stigler that “It is still a little hard to believe that the dissertation is finally behind me, much less that we finished on good terms.”
Letters includes correspondence with many well-known economists, including Friedman, Stigler, Arnold Harberger, Michael Spence, James Buchanan and others. Sowell also corresponds with other prominent individuals, such as Clarence Thomas, Vernon Jordan and Condoleezza Rice. Sowell and Thomas develop a strong friendship.
From Letters, we learn a good deal about Sowell’s personal life, his career path and the tough obstacles that he faced. In so doing, we gain some insight into his development as a person, as an economist and as a public intellectual. The early years of Sowell’s life did not portend the success that he would achieve later in life. Sowell, an African American, was born in 1930, shortly after the onset of the Great Depression, to a maid in North Carolina. Sowell’s father died before he was born and his mother died while he was very young. He was adopted by relatives and eventually moved to Harlem. Sowell’s family was poor and, in fact, he was the first in his family to graduate from the seventh grade. However, despite the obstacles he faced, in a letter to one of his sisters from his adopted family, he writes that “I was really very lucky early in life. I had four adults all to myself, and three of them were young people in the prime of their lives, with lots of energy and with no children of their own…Your mother taught me to read long before I went to school….Compare the amount of time and attention I received at that stage with what most children get.”
* The author is an economist with the Congressional Budget Office. Views expressed are the author’s and do not reflect those of the Congressional Budget Office.