Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell
Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell
About the Webinar
Professor of economics, Art Carden, interviews Wall Street Journal columnist, Jason Riley, on his first-ever biography of Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell is one of the great social theorists of our age. In a career spanning more than a half century, he has written over thirty books, covering topics from economic history and social inequality to political theory, race, and culture. His bold and unsentimental assaults on liberal orthodoxy have endeared him to many readers but have also enraged fellow intellectuals, the civil-rights establishment, and much of the mainstream media. The result has been a lack of acknowledgment of his scholarship among critics who prioritize political correctness.
Maverick showcases Sowell's most significant writings and traces the life events that shaped his ideas and resulted in a Black orphan from the Jim Crow South becoming one of our foremost public intellectuals.
This is a previously recorded webinar. The recording includes a 30-minute presentation followed by a 15-minute question and answer period by LIVE attendees. If you are interested in attending one of our upcoming webinars, look under the Upcoming Events tab.
About the Speaker
Art Carden
Art Carden is Margaret Gage Bush Distinguished Professor of Economics at Samford University’s Brock School of Business. He is also a Senior Fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research, a Research Fellow with the Independent Institute, and co-editor of the Southern Economic Journal. His research on mass-market retailers, economic history, and the history of economic ideas has appeared in journals like the Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Urban Economics, Public Choice, and Contemporary Economic Policy. He is a contributor to Forbes.com, and his commentaries and other articles have appeared in USA Today, Productive!, and many other outlets. He earned a BS and MA from the University of Alabama and an AM and PhD from Washington University in Saint Louis. Before joining the faculty at Samford, Art taught economics at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His first book, co-authored with Deirdre McCloskey and titled Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2020, and his second book, titled Strangers With Candy: Observations from the Ordinary Business of Life, was published by the Libertarian Christian Institute in 2023. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, their three children, and a hyperactive black lab named Lucy.
Jason Riley
Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where he has written about politics, economics, education, immigration and social inequality for more than 25 years. He’s also a frequent public speaker and provides commentary for television and radio news outlets.
After joining the Journal in 1994, Mr. Riley was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000 and a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. He joined the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank focused on urban affairs, in 2015.
Mr. Riley is the author of four books: Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders (2008); Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (2014); False Black Power? (2017); and Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell (2021).
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Mr. Riley earned a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has also worked for USA Today and the Buffalo News. He lives in suburban New York City.