A Map with Compass to Knowledge and Decisions
Dr. Thomas Sowell is now a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, having the academic credentials to be so honored with that position. He graduated from Harvard, received his master?s in economics from Columbia, and was awarded a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. To date, in his writings, including his newspaper columns, he has proposed solutions to many problems facing the world and America today: racism, poverty, and education. Because of his universal appeal, his books have been translated into several languages.
I recommend this work to those in management positions, private or public. Moreover, his knowledgeable views should be a prerequisite for any person who wishes to be an informed voter.
Sowell is a champion of clear thinking, who is always concerned with the results that will be achieved in any endeavor, rather than it just sounds like a nice thing to do. He analyses the constraints and incentives, or as popularized by Milton Freeman, Nobel Prize winner in economics, whose glowing review is on the back cover: ?There?s no such thing as a free lunch.? As the author states in the last paragraph of chapter one: ?The chapters that follow will consider the use of knowledge in economic, legal, and political institutions, the nature of the intellectual process and the role of intellectuals as a social class in influencing trends in modern society. Some disturbing implications of those trends will then be weighed.?
