Thomas Sowell Interview

[ndrosen]

My print copy of the December issue of Reason magazine arrived today, and I read an interview with Dr. Thomas Sowell in it, thirty-eight years after they ran an earlier interview, back in 1980. It isn’t online, but I presume that it will be. Dr. Sowell is now white-haired, but still rational and still acerbic. I remember reading the earlier interview, maybe soon after it was published, maybe a year or two afterward. I was fifteen years old in 1980, and although my views have evolved in some respects, I had basically the same political orientation that I have now.

I remember that someone had given my father a few copies of Reason, which were of interest to me, and after that, I read the magazine in libraries when I could. Once I got the Patent Office job in 1998, I could spare money to subscribe for myself.

Comments

[filkferengi]

Does his writing hold up, or has the Suck Fairy visited?

[ndrosen]

His writing holds up. I haven’t reread KNOWLEDGE AND DECISIONS or ETHNIC AMERICA lately, but I did read his autobiography, A PERSONAL ODYSSEY, not too many years ago, and it was quite good. He also wrote regular columns until rather recently, and they were learned, cogent, sometimes witty, and sometimes biting.