Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell.

Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell (2021) is the first full-length biography of the economist, social theorist, and prolific public intellectual Thomas Sowell, written by Jason L. Riley — a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and one of the most prominent conservative voices writing on race and public policy in America today. The book showcases Sowell's most significant writings and traces the life events that shaped his ideas, resulting in the story of a Black orphan from the Jim Crow South who became one of America's foremost public intellectuals — a trajectory that took him from a homeless shelter in the Bronx, where he kept a knife under his pillow for protection, through Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, where he came under the influence of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economic thought. In a career spanning more than a half century, Sowell has written over thirty books covering economic history, social inequality, political theory, race, and culture, and his bold and unsentimental challenges to liberal orthodoxy have endeared him to many readers while enraging much of the intellectual establishment and mainstream media. National Review called the biography fascinating and rare, the American Spectator described it as a must-read, and Steven Pinker of Harvard praised Sowell as among the most brilliant thinkers in the world today — deep, original, creative, fearless, and intimidatingly erudite.