Rating: 
Summary: Statistically nearly airtight, but choppy and it rambles
Review: I think this book is a must read for anyone no matter what their ideology. It shows inumerable ways in which actual information about central political issues can be manipulated, and shows how little actual thought or research actually goes into the debates that decide such issues. On the downside, this book gets very repetitive towards the end and the very vague nature of "the annointed" as well as the short time frame given for the rise of the arrogant intellectual when they date at least back to Greece and probably so long as there have been humans at all (see the tragety of the human condition he constantly alludes to) weakens this book as well. I have say I don't much care for any of the 87 reviews of this book. They are either slavering hero worship because he provides justifications being sought for views already held, something he condemned himself in this book and rightly so. The rest mostly bash him in ways that are not only spurious but spurious ways he listed in the course of the book. There were 2 notable reviews that avoided this, though the first of these 2 instead presupposed that what Sowell said in 1995 was supposed to apply to the election of 2000 and he was supposed to have supported the candidacy of gov. George W Bush for president and his entire aggenda before they existed and that he was supposed to have recognized hypocracy in a judicial ruling that would not exist for another 5 years either. The second is based in part on the logic that increased social security taxes accounted for the immediate upswing in revenue apparently without actually bothering to look up the seperate numbers for FICA taxes vs personal income taxes, corporate taxes, and indirect taxes on business, the recipts for all of which increased. This same reviewer also claims that INFLATION was a major factor in the increase in the number of homeless persons in the 80's an increase that neither he nor Sowell actually provide any proof of, and which is patently absurd because the rate of inflation fell to a fraction of what it was in the late 70's and early 80'd during the Reagan years. I think the "benighted" though its used as a sarcastic term in the book, would honestly be well applied to most of the other reviewers here.
Rating: 
Summary: Even handed and a great read
Review: I have been heavily involved in politics for about 10 years, and I think that this, F.A. Hayek's Road to Sefdom, and Mill's On Liberty are the three best political philosophy books I have ever read. This is one of those books that presents such a clear case and such a compelling way to look at political philosophy that even if you have a well developed way of looking at politics, reading this is like turning on a light, it really ties it all together.This book is always on my wish list, because I keep giving away my copy of it(in fact right now I don't own it) and so I keep buying new copies of it.
Rating: 
Summary: Some good / some worthless.
Review: This book is a mixed bag. Some parts were good, such as his (ultimately inconclusive) attack on the "middle and lower class Americans haven't gotten richer in two decades" argument. His evidence of the existence of economic mobility (individuals moving into higher income brackets over time) is correct, but lacks additional justification of this information (which exists, but not in this book). His take on racial issues is subpar. Mortgage loan study: I believe that there is no prevalent racial discrimination in mortgage laons, but sowell's attempt to prove this is lacking. His "proof" goes as follows. -Were mortgage lending discriminatory, blacks would have to be more qualified to attain loans
-by virtue of being more qualified , these blacks would ahve to pay lower default rates.
-blacks who are accepted pay approx. the same rates, therefore, there is no widespread discrimination. Do you see the fallacy? I do. Sowell fails to distinguish between "qualification" and one's statistics in certain areas used to determine qualification. Let's say that there is a black guy who makes $15,000 per year, and a white guy who makes $10,000. In the discriminatory lenders eyes, they have an equal degree of qualification. Presumably, in setting the rate, the lender will consider whatever additional areas he used to deem the two "equal"....rather than ignoring their race and setting it according to their income. An equal rate is fully compatible with discriminatory lending. The fact that a woman who conducted the study conceded Sowell's point probably means she was just a stupid beuraucrat who got intimidated in an interview. Sowell manages to prove that all discrepancies between groups are not caused by discrimination, however, the relevance of this to racial issues in present day America are suspect.The implications of his chronological account of the destruction of the black family commit the "correlation equals causation" fallacy.
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