exceeds high expectations

"Black Rednecks and White Liberals" (catchy title, eh?) is the best book Ive read in the last 12 months. It is really 6 connected essays on a common theme. The three essays: the Real History of Slavery;Germans and History, and the Title essay are truly outstanding, the others vary between pedestrian and good.
Some reviews here complain that this is not detailed enough.
If you wish to read a scholarly monograph such as "Race Relations in "Cobb County" Georgia 1890-1895" you wil be disappointed. This book is not that. What it is one of the great economist/historians of our time giving the reader tremendous insights. Dr. Sowell loves Western Civilization and the Enlighenment. So different from most academic worshipers of
Rouseauistic primitivism. A quick comment on some prior reviews. "Scotch/Irish" One: Scotch in Scotland refers only to whisky. Secondly this sounds to me a lot like German-Polish or
Armenian-Turk or Greek-Turk. Intermarriage occurred amoung these groups but I venture it was rare.
Lastly one minor corretion to Dr.Sowell. He mentions that Charles II of England was forced into a midnight departure exile. Not the "Merry Monarch" but his polar opposite brother, JamesII.

An Unapologetic, Unflinching Examination of Black America

What impressed me most about this compellation of essays was how copiously researched and documented they were and the cogent manner in which they were presented. Unlike the predisposed antagonistic review below that attempts to obfuscate the reader by using words like "putative" rather than "alleged" like the rest of us great unwashed, Mr. Sowell comes to the reader without intellectual pretense. Btw, Mr. Sowell isn't "alleging" a link between white rednecks and southern blacks, he's averring it...how's that for obfuscation?

It is convenient and utterly lacking in erudition (still obfuscating) to dismiss Sowell's contentions because they don't have at their core a proactive antagonist who (the collective "who") usurps the downtrodden at every turn. It's tantamount to that oft used contradictory argument that if the cops make an arrest in a black or Hispanic neighborhood, it's because they focus more attention on that neighborhood, but if they aren't around when a crime is committed in that same neighborhood a day later, it's because they don't care enough about what goes on there to pay it much heed. These kinds of reflexive arguments are indicative of the predisposed, un-erudite liberal elitists who seem to be quite deft at finding the root cause of all the ills visited on black America at the hands of the white majority, but are hard-pressed to explain why a continent predominated by blacks and governed by blacks has been a virtual cesspit for thousands of years. What they can't seem to grasp is that it has little to do with race, on either continent, and everything to do with culture and political/economic systems.

I just read an incredible book by Kenneth Bucchi that illustrates in a less cerebral and more corporeal way, how people are affected more by the factors Mr. Sowell speaks of than those commonly accepted by the left side of the political isle. If you happen to read Bucchi's book, which I highly recommend you do, pay particular attention to the two main characters, Bucchi and an African-American gentleman named Box. They came from diametrically different backgrounds and were thrust into a world that neither of them could possibly have been prepared for and yet, all things being equal, they both performed most admirably and courageously.

Sowell is The Man !

I love the stuff that Thomas Sowell writes. Basically, he is saying, it is about culture, not the color of your skin. For example, does anyone really think that if Rodney King had been a white redneck (instead of a black one), the cops would have treated him any differently ? He leads the cops on a long, dangerous chase and then makes a lunge at the cops and refuses to stay down when they order him down. Of course they beat him down. It would have gone down EXACTLY that same way if King had been a white dude with a bunch of nasty "tats" and a shaved head and a bad attitude. The truth is, the "crackers" in the South were a violent crew ready to kill if anyone "dissed" them ("crossed them". Read "The Mind of the South" if you doubt that), and lots of white guys still have that attitude. A lot of black guys do too. It seems to be really prevalent in black culture, or at least in parts of it. As Oprah said, it is not about race, it is about culture. The truth is, in the U.S. (and everywhere), you get treated the way you ACT, the way you DRESS, and your attitude. I have been in many bars where blacks and whites mingle without a second thought. Then some white "redneck" comes in, and people act like they don't want him there, because of: a. his dress, b. his attitude. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, red, yellow, or green. If you act like a redneck, you get played like one.