I'm interested in reading Thomas Sowell, specifically Intellectuals

Paul Johnson's Intellectuals would be a great companion to Sowell's book. He essentially examines the lives of prominent intellectuals, mainly leftists, and notices a reoccurring theme of them being incredibly shitty people in their personal lives. Before you write the book off as one big ad hominem, trust me, if you are interested in Sowell you will love it. There is an actual point being made, just be patient. Be sure to also check out Christopher Lasch's Revolt of the Elites which covers many of the same themes in Sowell's work.

>>8817783

Road to Serfdom

>>8817844
Lasch is much better than Sowell who is just a typical neoliberal Republican, albeit a more articulate one. Lasch is critical of both liberals and conservatives, which makes him more interesting to read.

>>8817912
Thanks for the recommendation, never heard of him but he looks interesting.

>>8817844
Paul Johnson is pretty based

Race and Culture: A World View was very influential for me. Really made me think ; )

>>8817844

And what is that actual point, anon? Favor a different anon who has no intention of reading any of these books but who is now curious about the punchline that you are dangling.

How you comport yourself in your daily life genuinely bleeds over into whatever intellectual activity you undertake, and directly affects the quality (or lack thereof) of the latter material, something like that? Or is it more interesting than that banality?

>>8817912
I prefer Lasch to Sowell as well, I was not trying to compare to the two in terms of significance but was trying to bring attention to the fact that Sowell's touches upon many of the same themes Lasch explicated on over the course of his career.

>>8817993
No one is going to go through the trouble of writing a 400 page book to deliver a punchline along the lines of "Marxism is wrong because Marx was a bad person.". That would be extremely banal as you say. Read the book.

>>8818067

Just because neither of us would care to read such a thing doesn't mean that your premise is true. Quite the opposite, it's false, as a little recollection shows. There are boring screeds everywhere.

And you know as well as I do that your point is amenable to paragraph summary, and here I win. Because even though you're being cute, the fact that you /could/ summarize if you really wanted to (and again, you know as well as I do that you are capable of doing this) puts the lie to what you've just said.

Although you still should stop being cute and just give it up, because as you also already know, I'm not going to read the book. I have other things I'm working on.

The Intellectuals and the Masses : Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia 1880-1939 By:John Carey.

Carey and Sowell are unlikely allies but they both have a strong desire to make sure their specialist fields,economics and literature respectively , remain in the hands of the majority of the people.
if you ever want someone to fling shit at your literary icons Carry is your man.