Christmas Books
by Thomas Sowell
Recently
by Thomas Sowell: Alice
in Liberal Land
The joys of
Christmas do not include coping with crowds at shopping malls or
wracking your brains trying to figure out what to get as a gift
for someone who already seems to have everything.
Books are a
way out of both situations. You don't even have to go to a bookstore,
with books so readily available on-line. As for the person who seems
to have everything, newly published books are among the things they
probably don't always have.
One of the
most enjoyable new books I read this year was a biography titled
Stan
Musial: An American Life by George Vecsey. Musial was one
of the great hitters in the history of baseball, with a lifetime
batting average of .331.
This biography,
however, is more about Musial the man, and the era in American life
in which he lived, which makes it more three-dimensional. It is
a good read, and may be especially appreciated by people old enough
to remember that era and the values that prevailed in that era,
which Musial exemplified.
Another new
and very different book about a by-gone era that I enjoyed was The
Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America
by Marc Levinson. It is about the rise and fall of the A&P grocery
chain, once the largest retailer in the world, with 15,000 stores,
and renowned for its high quality and low prices.
But this is
more than an economic story. It is a human story about a family
that dedicated itself to making its business the best it could be
– and how the death of the last member of that family was followed
by A&P's decline into oblivion.
Two far less
uplifting books were published this year but both contain important
charges of profound and dangerous corruption. The first is titled
Injustice
by J. Christian Adams. He charges the Department of Justice under
Attorney General Eric Holder with turning a blind eye to widespread
election fraud and intimidation, when those who are committing these
acts are black.
The other book
is FDR
Goes to War by Burton W. Folsom and Anita Folsom. The romantic
legends of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that whole generations
have been taught in schools, on television and in the movies have
been debunked by a whole series of history books, of which this
is the latest and perhaps the most devastating – and painfully relevant
to our current president.
Economist and
columnist Walter Williams' new book this year is Race
and Economics. You don't need to know any economics to read
it, but you will know some after you do. If you believe that things
like minimum wage laws or government regulations in general help
low-income minorities, you will find it hard to keep believing that
after this book bombards you with hard facts and hard data, going
back for decades.
Ann Coulter's
new book this year, Demonic,
is in the tradition of her other books with one-word titles, a blend
of very sharp wit and thoroughly researched facts. It will delight
Ann Coulter's fans and may cause those few liberals who read it
to be at risk for apoplexy.
Although Demonic
was published before the "Occupy Wall Street" movement got under
way, its subtitle was prophetic: "How the Liberal Mob is Endangering
America." Its theme is how mob thinking and mob actions have long
been common on the left, whether in academia, the media or the streets.
One chapter is titled, "You Can Lead a Mob to Water, But You Can't
Make It Think."
Another writer
whose series of books likewise blend wit and wisdom is Theodore
Dalrymple, a British doctor who has lived in various countries around
the world. His latest book this year is titled Anything
Goes, and its theme is the degeneration of Western culture,
to the accompaniment of unthinking rhetoric.
My
all-time favorite among Theodore Dalrymple's books is Life
at the Bottom. It is based on his chilling experiences working
in a low-income, predominantly white neighborhood in Britain. It
is a classic examination of the moral squalor produced by the welfare
state and its ideological rhetoric, regardless of race.
My own new
books this year include The
Thomas Sowell Reader, which has more than 400 pages of selections
of my writings over the past decades, ranging from the humorous
to the painfully serious. The 4th edition of my Basic
Economics and the 2nd edition of my Economic
Facts and Fallacies were also published this year. Merry
Christmas.
December
7, 2011
Thomas
Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other
Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators
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