Thomas Sowell has 18 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 24 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 1,435 ratings. The most-rated is Basic Economics, Fifth Edition.
Basic Economics, Fifth Edition
Summary
In this fifth edition of Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell revises and updates his popular book on commonsense economics, bringing the world into clearer focus through a basic understanding of the fundamental economic principles and how they explain our lives. Drawing on lively examples from around the world and from centuries of history, Sowell explains basic economic principles for the general public in plain English. Basic Economics,which has now been translated into six languages and has additional material online, remains true to its core principle: that the fundamental facts and principles of economics do not require jargon, graphs, or equations and can be learned in a relaxed and even enjoyable way.
©2014 Thomas Sowell (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Black Rednecks and White Liberals
Summary
This explosive new audiobook challenges many of the long-held assumptions about blacks, about Jews, about Germans and Nazis, about slavery, and about education. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on the trendy intellectuals of our times as well as historic interpreters of American life. Through a series of essays, Sowell presents an in-depth look at key beliefs behind many policies and trends. He presents eye-opening insights into the development of the ghetto culture, a culture cheered on toward self-destruction by white liberals who consider themselves "friends" of blacks. Black Rednecks and White Liberals is the capstone of decades of outstanding research and writing on racial and cultural issues by Thomas Sowell.
©2005 Thomas Sowell (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks
Discrimination and Disparities
Summary
Discrimination and Disparities challenges believers in such one-factor explanations of economic outcome differences as discrimination, exploitation, or genetics. It is listenable enough for people with no prior knowledge of economics. Yet the empirical evidence with which it backs up its analysis spans the globe and challenges beliefs across the ideological spectrum. The point of Discrimination and Disparities is not to recommend some particular policy "fix" at the end, but to clarify why so many policy fixes have turned out to be counterproductive, and to expose some seemingly invincible fallacies behind many counterproductive policies. The final chapter deals with social visions and their human consequences.
©2018 Thomas Sowell (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Quest for Cosmic Justice
Summary
This book is about the great moral issues underlying many of the headline-making political controversies of our times. It is not a comforting book but a book about disturbing and dangerous trends. The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies. Those consequences include the steady and dangerous erosion of fundamental principles of freedom - amounting to a quiet repeal of the American revolution. The Quest for Cosmic Justice is the summation of a lifetime of study and thought about where we as a society are headed - and why we need to change course before we do irretrievable damage.
©2001 Thomas Sowell (P)2017 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Intellectuals and Society
Summary
This is a study of how intellectuals as a class affect modern societies by shaping the climate of opinion in which official policies develop, on issues ranging from economics to law to war and peace. The thesis of Intellectuals and Society is that the influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals. Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society-- and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.
©2009 Thomas Sowell (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Knowledge and Decisions
Summary
This reissue of Thomas Sowell’s classic study of decision making, which includes a preface by the author, updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, one of America’s most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making—a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency but our very freedom. This is because actual knowledge is being replaced by assumptions based on an abstract and elitist social vision of what ought to be. Knowledge and Decisions, a winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Center Prize, was heralded as a landmark work and selected for this prize “because of its cogent contribution to our understanding of the differences between the market process and the process of government.” In announcing the award, the center acclaimed that the “contribution to our understanding of the process of regulation alone would make the book important, but in reemphasizing the diversity and efficiency that the market makes possible, [this] work goes deeper and becomes even more significant.” Thomas Sowell is currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has been published in both academic journals and such popular media as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune and writes a syndicated column for newspapers across the country.
©1980 Basic Books, Inc. Preface 1996 by Thomas Sowell (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Economic Facts and Fallacies
Summary
Economic Facts and Fallacies is designed for people who want to understand economic issues without getting bogged down in economic jargon, graphs, or political rhetoric. Writing in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics, Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues, including many that are widely disseminated in the media and by politicians: fallacies about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, academia, race, and Third World countries. While all of these fallacies have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power, this makes it even more important to carefully examine their flaws. Sowell holds these beliefs under the microscope and draws conclusions that are sure to inspire rigorous debate.
©2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Wealth, Poverty, and Politics
Summary
In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in the country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth. We cannot properly understand inequality if we focus exclusively on the distribution of wealth and ignore wealth-production factors such as geography, demography, and culture. Sowell contends that liberals have a particular interest in misreading the data and chastises them for using income inequality as an argument for the welfare state. Refuting Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and others, Sowell draws on empirical data to show that the inequality is not nearly as extreme or sensational as we have been led to believe. Transcending partisanship through a careful examination of data, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics reveals the truth about the most explosive political issue of our time.
©2015 Thomas Sowell (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Intellectuals and Race
Summary
Intellectuals and Race is a radical book in the original sense - one that goes to the root of the problem. The role of intellectuals in racial strife is explored in an international context that puts the American experience in a wholly new light. Intellectuals have played a major role in racial issues throughout the centuries. Though their individual views may differ, as a whole their views tend to group, and just over the course of the twentieth century, they have shifted from one end of the spectrum to the other. Surprisingly, these radically different views of race were held by intellectuals whose views on other issues were often very similar. Intellectuals and Race is not, however, a book about history, even though it has much historical evidence, as well as demographic, geographic, and economic evidence - all of it directed toward testing the underlying assumptions about race that have prevailed at times among intellectuals in general, and especially at their highest levels. Nor is this simply a theoretical exercise. Sowell’s ultimate concern is the impact of intellectual movements on the larger society, both past and present. These ideas and crusades have ranged widely from racial theories of intelligence to eugenics to “social justice” and multiculturalism. In addition to in-depth examinations of these and other issues, Intellectuals and Race explores the incentives, the visions, and the rationales that drive intellectuals at the highest levels to conclusions that have often turned out to be counterproductive and even disastrous, not only for particular racial or ethnic groups but for societies as a whole.
©2013 Thomas Sowell (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Dismantling America
Summary
These wide-ranging essays - on many individual political, economic, cultural, and legal issues - have as a recurring, underlying theme the decline of the values and institutions that have sustained and advanced American society for more than two centuries. This decline has been more than erosion. It has, in many cases, been a deliberate dismantling of American values and institutions by people convinced that their superior wisdom and virtue must override both the traditions of the country and the will of the people. Whether these essays (originally published as syndicated newspaper columns) are individually about financial bailouts, illegal immigrants, gay marriage, national security, or the Duke University rape case, the underlying concern is about what these very different kinds of things say about the general direction of American society. This larger and longer-lasting question is whether the particular issues discussed reflect a degeneration or dismantling of the America that we once knew and expected to pass on to our children and grandchildren. There are people determined that this country’s values, history, laws, traditions, and role in the world are fundamentally wrong and must be changed. Such people will not stop dismantling America unless they get stopped—and the next election may be the last time to stop them, before they take the country beyond the point of no return.
©2010 Thomas Sowell (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Charter Schools and Their Enemies
Summary
A leading conservative intellectual defends charter schools against the teachers' unions, politicians, and liberal educators who threaten to dismantle their success. The black-white educational achievement gap - so much discussed for so many years - has already been closed by black students attending New York City's charter schools. This might be expected to be welcome news. But it has been very unwelcome news in traditional public schools whose students are transferring to charter schools. A backlash against charter schools has been led by teachers unions, politicians, and others - not only in New York, but across the country. If those attacks succeed, the biggest losers will be minority youngsters for whom a quality education is their biggest chance for a better life. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Thomas Sowell (P)2020 Hachette Audio
The Thomas Sowell Reader
Summary
These selections from the many writings of Thomas Sowell over a period of half a century cover social, economic, cultural, legal, educational, and political issues. The sources range from Dr. Sowell’s letters, books, newspaper columns, and articles in both scholarly journals and popular magazines. The topics range from latetalking children to tax cuts for the rich, baseball, race, war, the role of judges, medical care, and the rhetoric of politicians. These topics are dealt with by drawing sometimes on history, sometimes on economics, and sometimes on a sense of humor.
©2011 Thomas Sowell (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
A Personal Odyssey
Summary
Here is the gritty, powerful story of Thomas Sowell's life-long education in the school of hard knocks, a journey that took him from Harlem to the Marines, the Ivy League, and a career as a controversial writer, teacher, and economist in government and private industry. It is also the story of the dramatically changing times in which this personal odyssey took place. The vignettes of the people and places that made impressions on Sowell at various stages of his life range from the poor and powerless to the mighty and the wealthy, from a home for homeless boys to the White House. More than an account of Sowell's life, this is also the story of the people who gave him their help, their support, and their loyalty, as well as those who demonized him and knifed him in the back. It is a study not just of one life, but also of life itself, with all its exhilaration, pain, constant striving, and deserved success.
©2000 Thomas Sowell (P)2001 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Basic Economics
Summary
Thomas Sowell has a different idea about how economics should be taught. With this groundbreaking introduction to economics, Sowell has thrown out the graphs, statistics, and jargon. Learning economics, he believes, should be relaxing - and even enjoyable. Sowell reveals the general principles behind any kind of economy - capitalist, socialist, feudal, and so on. In understandable language, he shows how to critique economic policies in terms of the incentives they create rather than the goals they proclaim. With clear explanations of the entire field, from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments, this is the first audiobook for anyone who wishes to understand how the economy functions. In this edition, Basic Economics has been revised and expanded to address the new concerns of the 21st century. It's focus has become more international, including the range of economic problems faced by foreign countries around the world. Each chapter reflects the experiences of many different peoples and cultures. In his straightforward style, Sowell demonstrates that the basic principles of economics are not confined by national borders.
©2000 Thomas Sowell (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Applied Economics
Summary
Applied Economics is an accessible guide to how our economic decisions develop. It explains the application of economics to major world problems, including housing, medical care, discrimination, and the economic development of nations. The book is based on an international view of economics, includes examples from around the world, and shows how certain incentives and constraints produce similar outcomes among disparate peoples and cultures.
©2009 Thomas Sowell (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Housing Boom and Bust
Summary
There was no single, dramatic event that set the current financial crisis off. A whole series of very questionable decisions by many people, in many places, over a period of years, built up the pressures that led to a sudden collapse of the housing market and of financial institutions that began to fall like dominoes as a result of investing in securities based on housing prices. This book is designed to unravel the tangled threads of that story. It also attempts to determine whether what is being done to deal with the problem is more likely to make things better or worse.
©2009 Thomas Sowell (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Every Hidden Thing
Summary
The hunt for a dinosaur skeleton buried in the Badlands, bitter rivalries, and a forbidden romance come together in this beautifully written new novel that's Romeo and Juliet meets Indiana Jones. Somewhere in the Badlands, embedded deep in centuries-buried rock and sand, lies the skeleton of a massive dinosaur, larger than anything the late nineteenth century world has ever seen. Some legends call it the Black Beauty, with its bones as black as ebony, but to seventeen-year-old Samuel Bolt it's the "rex," the king dinosaur that could put him and his struggling, temperamental archaeologist father in the history books (and conveniently make his father forget he's been kicked out of school), if they can just quarry it out. But Samuel and his father aren't the only ones after the rex. For Rachel Cartland this find could be her ticket to a different life, one where her loves of science and adventure aren't just relegated to books and sitting rooms. Because if she can't prove herself on this expedition with her professor father, the only adventures she may have to look forward to are marriage or spinsterhood. As their paths cross and the rivalry between their fathers becomes more intense, Samuel and Rachel are pushed closer together. And with both eyeing the same prize, their budding romance seems destined to fail. But as danger looms on the other side of the hills, causing everyone's secrets to come to light, Samuel and Rachel are forced to make a decision. Can they join forces to find their quarry - and with it a new life together - or will old enmities and prejudices keep them from both the rex and each other?
©2016 Firewing Productions, Inc. (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Black Hawks
Summary
Dark, thrilling and hilarious, The Black Hawks is an epic adventure perfect for fans of Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch. Life as a knight is not what Vedren Chel imagined. Bound by oath to a dead-end job in the service of a lazy step-uncle, Chel no longer dreams of glory - he dreams of going home. When invaders throw the kingdom into turmoil, Chel finds opportunity in the chaos: if he escorts a stranded prince to safety, Chel will be released from his oath. All he has to do is drag the brat from one side of the country to the other, through war and wilderness, chased all the way by ruthless assassins. With killers on your trail, you need killers watching your back. You need the Black Hawk Company - mercenaries, fighters without equal, a squabbling, scrapping pack of rogues. Prepare to join the Black Hawks.
©2019 David Wragg (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited